Friday, November 19, 2010

Convoy of Hope and the Miracle of Feeding the Multitude

What an amazing and inspiring weekend! God moved in miraculous ways that can only be described as supernatural. There are too many stories to tell, but one of my favorite stories was how God provided through a man named, Steve. We were only days away from throwing our giant party for thousands of needy, downhearted people in Sacramento and we knew we were going to be short on food. After doing everything we could to get one full truck of food from Convoy of Hope we were still two or three truckloads away from our goal. With no money left in the bank, one of our team members wrote a check for $7,000 from his personal account and said, "Buy food in Sacramento. Just get the best deal you can. We are going to need more." So, several of our friends loaded their cars with canned food from Cambell's Soup. At 8 cents per can it was an amazing deal. Four pallets of canned food later we were still going to be short. That's when amazing replaced frenzied and God showed His awsome might.

Steve was one of many hundreds of people to sign-up onlline as a volunteer for Convoy of Hope Sacramento. None of us had ever met him before, but he was quick to make himself available. On the drive to get the Cambell's food, he volunteered to pull the church trailer behind his large, heavy duty truck. We liked Steve from the beginning. He's the kind of guy who gets things done. Along the way we found out that Steve was a truck driver with UPS and just about that time we also recieved a call from the Fresno Food Bank offering two truckloads of food if we could pick them up. But how do you get two semi truckloads of food from Fresno to Sacramento with only three days notice and no money? Apparently, you let Steve know you need some help and watch God do miracles. Once Steve found out about the need he jumped into action, called his boss at UPS and found they were more than ready to make it happen. What normally takes three weeks for approval was fastracked by UPS and in 24 hours they recieved approval to pick-up the food in UPS trucks and ship them to Cal Expo just in time for the event. Our God is the One who provides. With no money and no time God provided beyond our expectations. At the last minute we also recieved another truck from Food Link and in the end, wouldn't you know it, we ran out of food at 3:00. God provided just what we needed, no more and no less.

In the end, we fed 7,000 people with more than 1,500 volunteers from 70 churches. We gave away 1,800 family portraits, 504 haircuts, multiple bags of clothes, eye glasses, medical and dental services and the Hope than can be found only in Jesus Christ. Hundreds of people responded to the gospel and now the follow-up begins. Thank you to all who made this amazing event possible. We look forward to our volunteer rally celebration in December and even more so to seeing what God will do through us next year.

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