Serving up Jesus Sandwiches in Joplin

They are more than numbers…they are people.  Though the number of deaths continue to climb to over 130, and the number of missing falls below 200, each number is a person.  That’s what we have to remind ourselves again and again.  They are a body, soul and spirit, each one.  GPC and the teams that our going up to Joplin daily are doing more than moving heaps of trash, they are getting to know the people.  They are going back day after day to  some of the same families and now expanding into the extended families.  We are wanting to keep the faces on the number and to know the names with every face we bless and encourage.  Here is the latest journal from Caleb and the team.

Started by driving everyone on today’s team to “ground-zero” so that they could go ahead and take in the shock factor.  Our first stop was at Mathew Shear’s house.  I have been mentioning Mathew and his family the past few days.  Their house is ok, we cleaned absolutely every bit of debris out of their yard, but as I mentioned previously, they’ve suffered the loss of very close friends.  For some reason I feel a connection to Matt.  I have been praying with him each day I’ve been there.  I have been offering anything and everything to help them in any way.  We always get the response, however, that they’re fine, but just struggling with the emotions of death of friends.  So we drove to Empire Street where Matt is located.  -Very close to St. Johns, but Matt’s house was somehow spared complete destruction.  When we arrived, Matt was in his car making a phone call.  I waved to him and waited until he was finished.  Once again, I shook his hand, asked how he was holding up, if he had everything they needed, etc.  Matt began to tell us a story and this is when I got fairly emotional myself…

Matt Shear and his wife have been fairly reluctant to accept handouts of basic necessities.  They’ve been turning down bottled water and food that many volunteers are glady handing out.  Matt said they just feel like they’re one of the lucky ones since their house is in tact and they don’t feel like they need free handouts.  He said that his neighbor gave them a reality check when they told him he better begin accepting help because help won’t be around like this in another month or two.  Matt said at one point yesterday evening he opened up his door and found that someone had left a box of sandwiches.  -This is normal right now as volunteers are stepping up to give anything and everything to the victims.  Matt took the sandwiches in and decided he’d try one.  After biting into the most basic ham and cheese sandwich with absolutely nothing else on it, he almost started laughing.  Matt said, “I can’t believe two pieces of white bread and a slice of ham and cheese can make me feel like this, and I feel like I can taste some sort of love or even Jesus”.  (These were his words!)  Matt said, “I started calling them Jesus sandwiches.  They were the most basic made sandwich you could imagine, but it was like I could tell they were Jesus sandwiches.  I told my wife, you’ve got to try one of these and so she did and she said the same thing.”  Matt was trying to express that there was nothing fancy to these things and he didn’t even want the handout, but after biting into the most basic, dry tasting sandwich, it was like it gave them an overwhelming feeling of hope, love, and encouragement, knowing these sandwiches were made by people who love Jesus and other people.  Matt and his wife are emotionally deeply wounded, but God is revealing himself to their family in more ways than I’ve ever seen, even through a dry ham and cheese sandwich made with love. I have Matt’s email, and he knows all of our contact info.

The remainder of the day was spent across town clearing a massive oak tree off of a home and salvaging pictures for Trish and Stan.  Trish is the daughter of Jim Glass, the 82 yr old man we met yesterday.  By the end of our day we were left with a 12 foot long oak tree trunk that was probably over 150 yrs old.  This thing was massive.  I had begun to cut it up, and completely ruined another chain as I happened to find steel that was embedded deeply into the tree.  At this point, our saws were useless and we had no way to move this trunk to allow their car to be backed out.  As our hopes of providing transportation back to this family began to fade, a man from Carthage drove up pulling a tractor and asked if we could use some help.  Needless to say, God provided our needs to meet others’ needs throughout the day.  We did some extremely difficult physical work, but we were able to clear a path for their car and a motorcycle to make it out of their garage.  -That is a huge accomplishment as they were able to gain access to transportation, which most people are without.

GPC leaves again Saturday morning at 6:00am.  We encourage you to consider joining a team.  Tomorrow we are going up with Metro Church.  A local church plant in NWA.  I love it when the Kingdom of God and His churches work together.

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