by David Fawcett

The All Saints' monthly Food Giveaway is always a blessing for both those in the church and those who come in for food and for prayer.

To give everyone a closer look at how many blessings flow out of this event, here's a summary from the last one. It captures well how God moves in the most unexpected ways to meet the physical and the spiritual needs. 

First the physical. 

With the normal leadership group unavailable that day, Walt and Margie DeHoust stepped in to oversee everything for the July food pantry.

Things got off to a rocky start Friday morning (July 12) when Food Lion, the initial supplier, had no fruit or rice they were scheduled to provide.

Thankfully, Featherstone Elementary came to the rescue when they contacted All Saints’ to let us know they had leftover food from their give-away on Wednesday.

They said they had 18 bags. What they really had, though, were 18 very large bags each filled with five smaller bags packed with items the church usually gives out, including pasta sauce, tuna, soup, green beans and the much-needed canned fruit and bags of rice. Thankfully, a young teacher helped the DeHousts load the car since the bags were so heavy.

The blessings continued when Larry Moyer stepped in at the last minute in place of Jim Morrison (who was out of town) and graciously volunteered to drive the 200+ miles round trip to First Fruits Farm in Maryland. 

Then unexpected provisions continued the next day at the food pantry. There was a big shortage of maseca. But then Andrew Gray showed up with a truckload of it followed by another person who brought more.  

Also, more volunteers stepped in to make sure every role was filled. 

“It just seemed to me that every time I thought of something that had to be done I'd turn around and there would be someone doing it on their own, unsolicited,” Walt DeHoust said. “This happened at least five or six times.”

As far as prayer goes, we had four prayer warriors: David Fawcett, Kat Zwingle, David Lee, and in another unexpected blessing, Eduardo Steves, whose schedule allowed him to make it this time. Eduardo is bilingual, which really, really helps with mostly Hispanic people coming in for prayer.

We had 32 individuals come through for prayer, most in groups of two or three. 

As always, God was good in giving us the time to pray for each person without feeling rushed or having someone wait too long. 

All the prayer recipients were either African or Hispanic with most of them having a home church and a solid faith. Some kids were with adults, but most of those who came through were adults. 

We had at least seven come through who are regular prayer recipients.

It was a great opportunity for outreach. One couple planned on signing up their kids for VBS. Another couple planned on coming to a Sunday service. A young pregnant lady got information about Life First

The needs were varied and, in many cases, heavy-duty. 

There was a woman from Honduras who, along with her family, said she left everything behind in her native country for fear of being killed. Another woman needed prayer for her 28-year-old son who was going in for his sixth surgery that next day for intestinal issues. 

“The biggest takeaway for me was how grateful again these people are for prayer,” David Fawcett said. “Despite the challenges they are facing, they come in with smiles on their faces with hearts full of praise. There is no griping or woe-is-me. It’s very convicting.”