Yesterday was a great day of ministry in Swampscott. For the past few weeks we have had some volunteer help from a group of eight college students. Since the annual Strawberry Festival was happening in Swampscott yesterday, we decided to deploy this small army of students to make and give away cups of cold strawberry lemonade. Of course, what sounds like a simple plan actually required a lot of faith on our part.
Faith Challenge #1: Food – It has been a pleasure working with these students and they are basically octo-multiplying (made that up) our efforts here in Swampscott with the time they are spending meeting people, conducting surveys, and blessing people! It has also been a pleasure sharing meals with them. For the most part, people in our church have volunteered to give meals. However, on Sunday, we basically had nothing lined up for them.
God Is Faithful #1: Food Provided – On Sunday morning, just 8 hours before we needed to provide a meal, the youth pastor of Grace Community Church in Marblehead approached me and asked if we could use some hamburgers and hotdogs that they had left over from a previous event. We graciously accepted! Praise God for providing the food!
Faith Challenge #2: Lemonade – As we are still in the process of raising our own support, we don’t really have a budget for things like strawberries and lemonade. In fact, not only do we not have a budget, we barely have a bank balance. Yet, we knew we wanted to bless our town with a small gift of love, and giving away strawberry lemonade at a Strawberry Festival with smiles on our faces and an invitation to a Bible study for the adults sounded like a good idea.
God Is Faithful #2: Lemonade Provided – We basically had a little bit of money in our account and decided this was the way God wanted us to spend the money. It was not a waste of resources! We met dozens of people and left a positive impression and talked with several people about our upcoming Bible study and about our church. Looking forward to seeing how God uses this in the coming weeks!
Additionally, this morning I found that someone had made a donation to our ministry through our online donation tool. The amount was about four times what we spent on the strawberries and lemonade in the first place!
Faith Challenge # 3: Rain – An hour before the Strawberry Festival, I drove down to see if they were still setting up because it was raining outside. Even the weather forecast was for rain all evening and into the night. There were a few people setting up and they said they were still on. However, even if the event was still being held, we had no tent or enough umbrellas to protect our team from the rain. No one wants to stand in the rain and give away watered down lemonade. Besides, who wants to drink watered down lemonade?
Thirty minutes before the event, the rain was coming down even harder and so I called the team and said they could still come over to our house but that we wouldn’t be handing out lemonade. I went upstairs to cancel the printing job on my computer. No need to print anymore invitations to the Bible study right?
God Is Faithful #3: Sun – A couple of minutes later the team leader called back and asked if we were sure we were canceling and I started to say yes but I looked outside and it was crystal clear. Within minutes the clouds had rolled away and the sun was shining brightly! The team got to my place at 4pm and we prayed that God would grant us good weather and that He would be glorified through our small attempt to be a blessing in our community. From that point on, it was the most beautiful weather for an outdoor event: sunny, partly cloudy, light breeze, not too warm, beautiful!
Faith Challenge #4: Fuel – This is a small little miracle, but I thought it was a fun way to end the day. We have been running low on our gas for the gas grill for a week or two now. I’m sure I will need to go and fill it pretty soon but I’m not really looking forward to that right now. Yet, we needed to cook the hamburgers for the team after spending a few hours giving away lemonade.
God Is Faithful #4: Fuel Provided – The beef patties were pre-formed and were frozen so all I had to do was throw some on the grill, get out the condiments and pour some drinks (actually, some of the students helped with a lot of the preparation). After two minutes of cooking, the fire was so strong that I simply shut off the gas. The burgers were on the grill for about 10 minutes in total and I probably only used two minutes with the grill turned on. The rest of the time, the fire continued simply by feeding on its own grease. I’ve never seen my grill or any grill do that…sure, sometimes you have to turn the grill off to let the fire die down, but I’ve always had to turn it back on at some point.
Just one more way that our Father shows His faithfulness!
Thank you, Father, for a beautiful evening and the opportunity to show your grace to our neighbors.