Imagine a couple hundred Christians from several churches and all walks of life standing together under a giant white tent shouting as loud as we could “JESUS” on the count of three, and you can imagine a wonderful start to a beautiful Saturday morning. It was one of the most beautiful sounds I’ve ever heard.
Our son Chip, his daughter Madisyn, his girlfriend Kim and his mom, ME volunteered to help serve free hot meals to 2400 Hammond residents. The event was called THANKSGIVING SERVOLUTION. Serving 2400 hot meals seemed to me to be a monumental task, but they were so very organized, thanks to Jason Granger from Soul’s Harbor, that everything went quite smoothly throughout the whole day.
Lots of men were there at 4 am Saturday morning fixing smoked chicken and a Christian catering company, El Shaddai Caterers, cooked the jambalaya. Lots of other worked on getting everything ready for the actual distribution starting at 11 am.
Chip’s church, Soul’s Harbor will be moving soon into what us locals call the “Old Schwegmann’s Building” in Hammond. It’s been vacant many years and I wrote about them moving there recently. The new Soul’s Harbor church building served as the distribution site Saturday. They just put up the banner on the old grocery making it official. That’s some of the workers gathered in front early in the morning.
An assembly line was formed and over 100 of the volunteers made their way through the line at least 20 times during the course of the day getting a hot meal box filled up. 1000 meals were delivered throughout the city with the remaining folks receiving theirs through a drive through distribution line that came through for a couple of hours.
It was such an amazing thing to spend so much time with Christians serving the community by showing God’s love to them. No one was cursing, everyone was loving and caring to each other and I met people from several different churches. Of course, as much as I like to talk, I shared all about us and our RV life and learned lots about each of them!
The most special thing of the day was seeing so many children serving the Lord. Chip and Madisyn, and a bunch of other Soul’s Harbor children and parents, spent the first part of the morning putting together bags of teacher supplies and surprises for the teachers at one of Hammond’s school. 
Then the children and their parents came over to the distribution site and got right in line filling up box after box. They made their way down to the end of the line and grabbed a new empty box and started all over again. Our granddaughter Madisyn added a sucker on top of the paper we inserted into each box on top of the hot food. That was my job all day putting that all important paper in. She was near me with Chip and Kim who were putting utensils in each box. You can see her in the pictures of the serving line.
There was also a Bible distribution by the Gideons (that wonderful group of people who helped us in Minnesota put Bibles in the Northern Lights cabins). I tried several times to get a picture of them but my phone is new and I have trouble taking a picture on it and that was one of those times.
After the distribution at the church, Chip loaded up their trunks and car with hot meal boxes and lots of 
Bibles. We headed over to a Senior’s Village of homes in Hammond and went door to door offering them a hot meal and a Bible. All who were home were very happy to receive our gift. We even got to visit some ladies playing bingo in the Resident Center. They were so cute and just loved Madisyn.
I have no pictures from that stop or our next stop and I can’t say how sorry I am that I didn’t take some. The last stop was at Landmark Nursing Home where we visited with the residents in the community dining room where they were setting up for Bingo. Madisyn was a little timid at first but when she saw the effect she had on them she blossomed and became the Landmark darling! She distributed Bibles until she ran out. Then she went table to table introducing herself to the senior folks and the joy on each of their faces as they were hugged and kissed on by our little darling was a gift from God. They were all sitting up and smiling, waving to her as we left. I wish I could have captured all that with my camera but it was probably best that it was just a naturally wonderful time for all of them without my snapping pictures.
When Kim dropped Madisyn and I off at our RV she went over to her little friend Michael’s house across the street to play. They’ve played together since they were little and get along great. They posed for this picture when Chip and I picked her up.
Well that’s a wrap on our wonderful Saturday. I crashed when I got home and rested on the sofa all afternoon followed by an early bedtime. Didn’t realize until I stopped all the excitement how pooped I was! This old lady can’t do this type of stuff too often but I am so happy when I get to!
Ya’ll come back now, ya’ hear!
BECAUSE HE LIVES 