Food from M’dude

In the summer of 2018 I worked at Hume Lake Christian Camp. I worked with some great people who showed me the character of God in so many ways. One of these people was a girl named Sarah. She was a FIREBALL. She was one of those people who was always on level 10, if you know what I mean. She made everyone laugh and was one of those people you call the life of the party.

One day a group of us went out for dinner and as we left we saw a homeless person on the side of the road. As most people just kind of ignored them (I’m sad to say myself included) Sarah sat down on the ground next to him and started to talk to him. I don’t remember exactly what she said but I remember being astonished at the absolute love I was seeing. In that moment she was being Jesus to that man. It really made an impact on my life that she would do this and since I saw her do this I have found a desire in me to be able to do the same thing. She has no idea I am writing this, may never read it, and therefore has no idea she ever made this impact on my life but she did.

I think the effect this had on me was that it made me really start thinking about the homeless.  Of course I’ve known that God says we are to care for them but I’ve never exactly had the desire to do so before this. As I came on the race I knew I would experience more homeless people and I prayed that God would give me the heart to actually care for them.

I was right. I have experienced a lot more homeless people on the race. In Bangkok, Thailand, there were many. I wanted to care for them but I was nervous and felt like I didn’t know how. I saw my alumni squad leaders do little things like give them some of the food we had just bought at the grocery store and thought, “Yeah. Okay. I can do that.” So I started to figure out little ways to care for these people that before really made me nervous to interact with.  With a better idea of how to go about loving the homeless I started doing some of these little things I had seen others do.

After these past few months in South America, I got much more comfortable with talking to people and loving people that before might have made me nervous. (Want to know more about this? Read my recent blog: Perfect Love Casts Out Fear)

Without me even really recognizing it, God has been growing my love for homeless people and my confidence to interact with them. Because of all this background I have just shared with you, when my current team threw out the idea of cooking meals and handing out them to the people on the street I got really excited and immediately was pumped to go out and do this.

We decided we would call our food distribution ministry “Food from M’dude.” My dude being Jesus. My team spent 4 hours last Thursday morning cooking enough of a Peruvian rice meal to hand out to 30 people. My teammates Olivia, DJ, Morgan, and myself left the hostel with 15 meals and excited attitudes to share the love of Jesus with people. Here are just two short stories from what happened over the next two hours.

Every single person we gave food to was so appreciative. The very first two people we went to, we gave them food, asked them a few questions, and prayed for them. As it turned out there was a man watching us both times and as we stood up to keep going he came up and asked what we were doing and why. We got to explain to him how we were motivated by God because of His love for people and desire to provide for them. I think he was surprised that we would be doing something like that. It seemed difficult for him to understand and as we talked to him he asked more and more questions. Morgan and I gave him our blogs and the World Race website. If anything, he definitely left there thinking about Jesus and hopefully how deeply He cares for people. 

The very last woman we went to was a lady Olivia felt lead to give to. She was sitting in a wheelchair and as we walked up to her and shared with her what we were doing she started crying. She shared with us her story and said that she was sitting there praying to God that He would send her some angels. That’s when we came over. She cried and cried and said we were an answer to prayer. She said she felt that in that moment God had sent her four angels to love on her. We continued to talk to her and she shared about how she believes she’s in a wheelchair because of her sin. We were able to tell her how God has so much more grace for her than she could ever even fathom. We got to encourage her in Christ and just show her a little of how much God truly loves her.

This was one of my favorite days of the race so far. It was so amazing to get to go out and tell people over and over that God loves them and He desires to provide for them. It was cool to see how much people appreciated it and were so surprised that we wanted to care for them in this way.  I know God wants us to care for those in need but it certainly doesn’t come naturally to me. He has been working in me to really care for people. I no longer think of what I saw Sarah do last summer and get jealous because I wish I could have that kind of courage and love for the homeless. Doing homeless ministry actually gets me excited now. I can only hope that God continues to work in me and help me to show this kind of love to the homeless during times that aren’t labeled “ministry time” but just whenever I see someone in need.