Feeding our Community and the World

In the last two weeks I have had the opportunity to serve in two events which provided food for the people in Hamilton County and the country of Haiti.

Monday, August 16th, Fred Knoll and volunteers from White River drove to Christ Community Church in Fishers to unpack a semi-truck full of food donated from LeSEA Global to three local food pantries. I wish I had a picture of all the volunteers and the sheer delight on their faces as they say pallet after pallet of food was removed from this semi. One of the White River volunteers teared up as she shared how much of a blessing this food was. She expressed that the shelves at the pantry were so empty and she just didn't know where more food was going to come from. God more than provided for the pantry that week, as he does each and every week.

This is just one story of many that comes from the food pantry. This is now my one minute plug for the food pantry. Semi-trucks of food don't come every week, but family just like mine and yours go to the grocery store every week. What if for every dollar you spend at the grocery story, purchase 10% more for food to donate to the pantry. Consider it, ask God about it. He says in Malachi 3:10 "Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. Test me in this..."

The second event I was able to be apart was just last Sunday. The Jr. High and Sr. High, instead of our normal Sunday morning service, banded together to worship with our hand to pack over 10,000 meals for children in Haiti. I could write all day about how amazing it was to see all the youth sacrifice their Sunday morning for kids across the world that they don't know, but I'll let the pictures tell the story:

Jr. High and Sr. High working at the tables where they filled the bags with food. Did I mention that Jr. High students alone made 7,000 meals 1st service? We had to stop since we ran out of food. Image if they brought enough food for 30,000 meals!

Before filling the bags with food, we got to learn a little bit about LeSEA Global and the history of Haiti.

Some of the highschoolers working hard....or hardly working :)

Events like these you never forget. I'm sure the youth ministries will be doing this again, and when that happens, check Justin Fluhr's blog for his side of the story.

Question for my readers, if there are any...I'm still looking for a new name for this lovely blog since I finished my CIY challenge. Any suggestions?

The Finish Line

The race is done. The marathon is complete. Today, I finished reading the Bible through in a year. Yet, somehow I don't feel any different. It's like when you turn another year older, or even when you reach an important age like 18 or 21, you're still the same person as the day before.



Just because I read Malachi and Revelation 22 today, makes me no different than yesterday. However, I will say this; I am different than I was a year ago. Taking on this CIY challenge and being on this incredible journey has changed me. It has changed my view of not only the Bible, but of God, Jesus Christ, and the church. I fell in love with reading the Bible in the last 365 days. For those who have been reading my blog throughout the last year, I praise you for you patience during my occasional rants and tirades and I hope you've enjoyed, or at least got a few laughs from, my blog. In honor of completing my challenge, 66 Book in 365, I thought I'd run through a list of my favorite, and not so favorite, moments. (Cue video collage music, now)

• August began quite well in the gospels and Genesis/Exodus (I had no idea what was coming later on in the Pentateuch)


• Leviticus is most likely the driest book in the Bible, ick.


• In October, I got extremely behind and ended up reading all of Deuteronomy in one day.


• Romans was possibly my favorite book in the NT, and I cannot wait to read it today


• Going through the Kings, Samuel's, and Chronicles was an amazing history lesson of the Israelites


• God brought the book of Psalms and Proverbs to my reading schedule just at the time in my life that I needed encouraging reading
• With spring came lovely flowers, green trees, and the prophets. Now, some of the books were interesting reading, while others were like eating a brick
• When summer came, I knew I'd be done with my challenge soon, soon enough to start counting the days
• In July, I went to camp and got behind a week on my schedule, which was slightly stressing, but I finished. Here I am 365 days, with the Bible under my belt.

It's been a wonderful, stretching, hard, rewarding, frustrating, and enlightening year in God's word. The ways that God moved, even a thousand blogs cannot adequately describe. Like it says in John 21:25:

"Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written."

Though it's sad to think that this is my last post about my CIY challenge, this blog will stay. It's name and purpose may change a bit, but I will still be writing about my Savior and the things He does.