Once again he was right on time - at 8am on Friday September 24, Larry Schultz pulled in with his big truck from South Bend, Indiana - home of Feed The Hungry. Larry's 53 foot trailer was fully loaded with food for Detroit - 29,255 pounds of food to be sure.
And vans and trucks from over 30 local Ministries were waiting to receive. The line circled our parking lot and spilled out onto Lenore and 7 Mile Road. Other parts of the lot were filled with cars from those who came to help - there were so many cars that we had to have an Official Traffic Director!
It was a wild time as our volunteer teams began the unloading process and in just an hour or so, all that food was off Larry's big truck and neatly piled high around the HCC parking lot (did we mention that it was a BIG truck). Next came the selecting and reloading into the separate Ministries' trucks for distribution of the much-needed food around our City and our Region.
27 pallets of much needed supplies. There were veggies and noodles, peanut butter and crackers, mac & cheese and a lot more stuff. There was even toothpaste and granola bars - 2,240 pounds of granola bars to be exact. And, so, exactly how many granola bars are there in 2,240 pounds? I don't know either - let's just call it A LOT!
By 10:30am we were finished! The truck was empty and so was the parking lot!!! In just about 2 1/2 hours we unloaded, separated and then reloaded all 27 pallets / all 29,255 pounds of food - all except for that 1 granola bar that I saw somebody eating!?!? All reloaded and on its way to those in need.
It was a God thing for sure.... and it was fun. A fork lift truck and a pallet lifter were loaned to us to make the whole job much easier this time around. Many thanks to those who made that happen!!
Some of the local groups included Christ Church (Pastor Mark Einem), Christian Gospel Center (Pastor Marcus Ways), Living the Word (Pastor Taylor Cox), Lord of Lords (Pastor Calvin Glass), Lord of the Harvest (Pastor Mike Osminski), Metro Life International (Pastor Matthew Cripps), Oakland Avenue Baptist (Pastor Larry Walker), Pilgrim Church (Pastor Henry Covington), Rosedale Park Baptist (Pastor Matt Parker), Temple of Faith Baptist (Pastor Rochelle Davis), Institute for Black Family Development, and many more. We want to thank all of the volunteers who worked so hard to make this day a success.
And we had the special privilege of meeting Lamar Austin from Feed The Hungry. Lamar is LeSEA's Director of Media & Ministry Resources - and a really cool guy, too. Pastor Bob and Lamar shared dinner on Thursday evening and found that they had a lot to talk about. They shared their vision for touching our Region and made some exciting plans for the future.
Also, Lamar invited some of our Local Pastors and Ministry Leaders to South Bend to meet with the Feed The Hungry team and tour their facilities. This is getting gooder and gooder as we become a bigger part of the vision to feed the hungry, empower the churches and win the lost.
LeSEA Global Feed The Hungry was founded in 1987 by Dr Lester Sumrall (1913-1996) and Harvest Christian Church has supported FTH since the beginning. In over twenty years, more than $200 million of food and relief supplies have been distributed in 92 nations of the world. Their pastor-to-pastor, church-to-church programs ensure that the food gets directly to those who need it most. It is put directly into the hands of local church leaders who intimately know the needs of their communities. You can learn more about Feed The Hungry by going to our Missionaries page.
CLICK to See Photos of the work in progress