Day Twelve

Did you ever wonder how some of those Bible miracles could have happened right before those people’s eyes, and they had no clue what was occurring till it was done? Like, how did a little boy present five loaves of bread and two fish to JESUS and then voila’, twelve baskets of leftovers after feeding 5000 + people. Well I certainly did, and now I have my own personal clue as to one of the possibilities of how those miracles could occur without the people being aware of the supernatural component until it was all over with.

My daughter Rebekah and I went on a mission’s trip to Ecuador. One of the ways the organization (Brio magazine trips with Focus on the Family) fed the large teams was to have each person on the trip bring two jars of peanut butter and two jars of jelly along on the trip.  I know this sounds strange, but when you have to feed about 800 people in a third world country who are driving to various locations on buses doing different types of practical work, like painting or building, it stretches the money and outreach capabilities immensely. So each morning every team would grab two loaves of bread, bring one of the team member’s jars of jelly and peanut butter, and grab one piece of fresh fruit for each person on the team. We would make the sandwiches at the hotel before leaving in the morning, then we would go to our assigned outreaches bringing our sandwiches in the bread bags and the rest of our lunch, and the other equipment we needed for each day of work. Each team would pantomime a story using sound equipment and a tape of music sometime during their service work. This time of acting out the story would be followed by testimony time and sharing the gospel to the group we were trying to serve. After nearly two weeks of being together all day and night, our team became very close with our local interpreter. She asked us to consider driving to her family’s little village on the side of a volcano and sharing the gospel through the drama if we had any spare time on our final day of ministry.  They were so exceptionally poor and virtually no one had ever even heard about the LORD, nor had someone come to visit them and bring them anything.

We got extremely excited when our morning project finished super early leaving us time to honor her request. As a team, we decided to forego our lunch and share the sandwiches with whomever was available after we shared our drama. We knew it could get a little risky because if a lot of people showed up, and we only had a few sandwiches we might be better off not sharing the food; however, after getting to the village, climbing the steep sides of the volcano to get to the top near her mother’s home, and seeing the severity of the poverty surrounding us, we decided it was worth the risks to share. Every day each of the adults on the teams would divide up the different jobs so no one person would ever do the same thing repetitively. That day happened to be when I was in charge of security and distribution, meaning I knew exactly how many sandwiches we started with because it was my job to count all our supplies and keep track of their coming and going off of and onto the buses at each location of service. (It has been nearly 13 years since this story occurred and I have not found my old journal with the “facts/details”, so I might be remembering the specific numbers wrong. Please forgive me and if you want to read the story as documented years ago, let me know and I will get the magazine article written about this event for you). I counted a couple of times that day before we got to our sight and began our ministry-22 peanut butter and jelly sandwiches-22.

After years of being away from this event, I still remember vividly how psyched everyone was to be at her village and especially to share with her mother and some other close family and friends. None of them knew about JESUS, and they were living in  horrible poverty stricken situations. Her mother’s home consisted of a piece of tin with holes in it, no running water, raw sewage running down open ditches between the “homes(shacks)”, and no official door to keep it warm or from storms. The children looked so hungry and some had distended bellies. No shoes or pieces of burlap tied onto their feet. It was one of the poorest places I ever remember being in in all my travels to date. But we had prayed often for her family, and for this opportunity to share what little we had with “her people” and show them the love of JESUS the best we could. We cleaned and picked up broken glass, and fixed what things we could on such short notice.  Then we cleared a little area to do our drama, and we began our time of ministry.

While most of the team were busy acting, running the sound equipment, or getting ready to share their testimonies, I sat and protected our gear, backpacks, and the food we were going to share as soon as the drama, testimonies, and sharing time was over. So I prayed and watched. I fought back tears longing for these people to see the true love of CHRIST through our sharing and soon through our practical giving of what we had-our food. I did a tentative head count and it was close to a hundred, so I figured if each youth handed out the sandwiches by breaking them into about ¼’s, we would get close to each person having at least a bite of sandwich. Then I continued to pray and ask the LORD to help protect us and for HIM to pour out HIS presence all around us.  Boy….did we ever watch that happen. So many of the people, young and old alike, started crying as they finished watching the drama.  Then as the testimonies were being shared, her mother started yelling and crying loudly. It was obvious her mother was really touched by something, but what exactly we didn’t know at the time. Shortly it was becoming our most emotionally impactful day and so much joy as the people were hungry for our love and sharing.

I called our designated team members over to begin handing out the sandwiches. I explained briefly that they should try to break the sandwiches into about 4 pieces each before handing them out so they would spread farther.  We joined hands and said a brief prayer out loud over the food simply thanking HIM for these sandwiches and  asking the LORD to make it spread and feed the hungry people here. There was no time to be long winded nor take our eyes off all that was occurring because a bigger crowd was coming even as we prayed.  I handed out the sandwiches and sent the youth in different directions. Minutes went by-I honestly don’t recall how many, but I know it was at least five or so, when one of the boys called across the crowd to me. “Lou, what should I do with the rest of my sandwiches?” I was stunned and honestly remember thinking to myself, “How hard is it to hand out about 6 sandwiches to a crowd this hungry and this large? What is he possibly doing that he isn’t already done handing out the sandwiches?” I shouted to him telling him to just start handing them out as a whole sandwich and not to worry about breaking the sandwiches into so many small pieces, to which he responded that he had been handing out whole sandwiches for a while already, and he thinks he has more than he did to start.

NOW WHAT IS AN INTELLIGENT PERSON SUPPOSED TO DO WITH THIS INFORMATION OTHER THAN TO SUPPOSE THAT THIS YOUNG INDIVIDUAL ISN’T TOO WITH IT? I MEAN, COME ON, MORE THAN WHEN YOU STARTED?  "What do you mean, “ I asked?  He yelled the same thing, and almost immediately two other girls started yelling the same things to me from across the crowds.  Now I was startled, confused, and just beginning to realize something OTHER WORLDLY WAS OCCURRING! Within a few more seconds each of the youth were expressing the same thoughts. They wanted to know what I wanted them to do with all their sandwiches, and they all said they were handing out whole sandwiches and just couldn’t seem to get rid of them all. So many other supernatural things occurred that afternoon. So many overwhelming emotions flooded our team that day and we literally handed out sandwiches the whole way back down the mountainside.  We stripped of as much of our clothing and shoes as we could, we gave away whatever food we had in our backpacks, we pooled the little money we had in our pockets, and YES-we gave away peanut butter and jelly sandwiches until we were out of sight and heading back to our destination. I will NEVER forget counting the two bread bags when we were driving back and having more sandwiches in the bags than when we started-NEVER! I saw a miracle and yet I never saw it at the same time. How did those sandwiches arrive, where did they come from, how was this happening and we were unaware the whole time? I have witnessed this first hand and yet I don’t know how to really explain what I witnessed? All I know is that GOD can use bread and fish AND peanut butter and jelly to feed as many people as HE wishes!