Fields White for Harvest, Part 1
I left a large loose end from my series of posts from RMGA by promising to tell about where God is leading me, then promptly forgetting. Hopefully I can remedy that today.
My friend Brian spoke at RMGA about an amazing new opportunity that God led him into with Christ's Body Ministries, which is a ministry to homeless people in Denver. Each week, CBM takes a truckload of donated food to downtown Denver. After a church service (which is organized by a different church each week), the pastor on staff with CBM preaches a short couple paragraphs from the back of the truck, then much food is unloaded and distributed. Campus Crusade comes in because the shelter doesn't have a whole lot of regular help. They asked Brian (or he volunteered, I'm not entirely sure on that part) if he could find some people to help.
Crusade stepped into the gap, and now every week a different Denver Metro-area school sends a crew (Cru - crew - Get it? Bad, I know...) to help. Mines had the honor of sending the first group one week after RMGA, and since I had no reason not to, I volunteered to help. One of the things God has impressed on my heart is that missing opportunities to share His love with people shortchanges me the most. His Word will be preached where He desires, but it's my option if I want to be involved. I thought that CBM would be a good opportunity for me for a couple reasons. First of all, I'm generally better working with my hands than working with my voice. I.E., I can do more than I can talk about. I figured that if nothing else, I would have no problem handing out food to people.
Six Mines students made their way downtown that morning: Ben, Alli, Nate, Brian, Marc, and I. Only Brian had visited this ministry before, and I'm not sure even he knew what to expect. I know that I didn't. We made sure that we were walking in God's hands the whole way, notably through the liberal use of prayer. We prayed before leaving campus, before leaving the shelter, and pretty much all along the way.
When we arrived, we found that all the organization had been done, and literally all that we had to do was do the work. Some of the donated produce was past its useful life, so our first task was to sort out the spoiled food from the good. Some of it was quite rotten, but a lot of it was still good. I laughed to myself - one of my tasks was shucking sweet corn. Like this was something I'd never done before... reminds me of home. We drove down to the ministry site, and had about 20 minutes before it was time to unload the truck.
Through various pursuits, including sitting in on the church service offered on Saturday mornings, we spent our time more or less profitably until we were given the "high sign". Pastor Bruce preached for a couple minutes from the back of the truck, then it was time to unload and pass out. The food was unloaded and sorted by type (produce, bread, etc), then Sally got the folks into a line, and we passed out food. After I got the hang of it, it became a lot of fun. It was a little like a sales job without money changing hands ("You know you want some of this fine [whatever], it looks really good this week. Let me hook you up with a little extra..."). Amazingly, in much less than half an hour, the truckload of food that we had brought was gone. It was pretty amazing!
(To Be Continued in Part 2)
My friend Brian spoke at RMGA about an amazing new opportunity that God led him into with Christ's Body Ministries, which is a ministry to homeless people in Denver. Each week, CBM takes a truckload of donated food to downtown Denver. After a church service (which is organized by a different church each week), the pastor on staff with CBM preaches a short couple paragraphs from the back of the truck, then much food is unloaded and distributed. Campus Crusade comes in because the shelter doesn't have a whole lot of regular help. They asked Brian (or he volunteered, I'm not entirely sure on that part) if he could find some people to help.
Crusade stepped into the gap, and now every week a different Denver Metro-area school sends a crew (Cru - crew - Get it? Bad, I know...) to help. Mines had the honor of sending the first group one week after RMGA, and since I had no reason not to, I volunteered to help. One of the things God has impressed on my heart is that missing opportunities to share His love with people shortchanges me the most. His Word will be preached where He desires, but it's my option if I want to be involved. I thought that CBM would be a good opportunity for me for a couple reasons. First of all, I'm generally better working with my hands than working with my voice. I.E., I can do more than I can talk about. I figured that if nothing else, I would have no problem handing out food to people.
Six Mines students made their way downtown that morning: Ben, Alli, Nate, Brian, Marc, and I. Only Brian had visited this ministry before, and I'm not sure even he knew what to expect. I know that I didn't. We made sure that we were walking in God's hands the whole way, notably through the liberal use of prayer. We prayed before leaving campus, before leaving the shelter, and pretty much all along the way.
When we arrived, we found that all the organization had been done, and literally all that we had to do was do the work. Some of the donated produce was past its useful life, so our first task was to sort out the spoiled food from the good. Some of it was quite rotten, but a lot of it was still good. I laughed to myself - one of my tasks was shucking sweet corn. Like this was something I'd never done before... reminds me of home. We drove down to the ministry site, and had about 20 minutes before it was time to unload the truck.
Through various pursuits, including sitting in on the church service offered on Saturday mornings, we spent our time more or less profitably until we were given the "high sign". Pastor Bruce preached for a couple minutes from the back of the truck, then it was time to unload and pass out. The food was unloaded and sorted by type (produce, bread, etc), then Sally got the folks into a line, and we passed out food. After I got the hang of it, it became a lot of fun. It was a little like a sales job without money changing hands ("You know you want some of this fine [whatever], it looks really good this week. Let me hook you up with a little extra..."). Amazingly, in much less than half an hour, the truckload of food that we had brought was gone. It was pretty amazing!
(To Be Continued in Part 2)
posted by The student of life at 10:45 AM
1 Comments:
That's good! Thanks for the update. I'm excited to read Part 2.
Post a Comment
<< Home