I received a very encouraging email from Lynn, who leads the Women’s Events team at PCC regarding the events of this past weekend. She agreed to let me share it here.

Hi, David.

Thanks for your message in church today. I was awed by how God worked this weekend. Our Friday night FAB theme was “Fill Another’s Basket”. Our speaker was Sue who shared her experiences with the Manna Ministry. Also, we collected baby items for the new babies of Manna. The generosity of these women was astounding (& with little publicity). It took about 5 women with their arms loaded to carry the items from the meeting room to the kitchen storeroom. Also that night, we planned the meal for December 16’s Manna lunch. We have 7 meatloaves, 50 servings of mashed potatoes, salad and desserts with servers all committed for the 16th. These 15-20 women made a huge difference for God on Friday night.

And then to participate in service witnessing God at work again… I know all the women of FAB were blessed!

Thanks!
Lynn

A few hours later, Sarah (another PCC person) sent me this email detailing a recent experience of serving the community that her business and small group recently participated in. It’s worth reading the whole thing.

Brief Background: We ran a coat drive through our business, trying to reach into our contacts in the community to give to the Pacific Garden Mission. Now before I say all this, I just want you to know that I didn’t have the time nor energy to run the coat drive, but 2 Thursdays ago the Lord made it pretty clear that we needed to do this. I had heard on Wednesday an interview on Moody with the president of the Mission, and when asked what the main need was, he didn’t say money, but coats. So I woke up the next morning with this fire to run this coat drive, and then talked myself out of it because we had way too much on our plate. But as I read the Bible and prayed getting ready for my bible study, funny how the verses on the poor and oppressed popped back up, and God made it very clear that we were supposed to do this. I argued with God and he argued back, defending his case within 20 minutes. So when people have given us a pat on the back, I just tell them how it started.

How it ended up: I knew we were heading out of town, so we sent the letters out on the 29th of November, and ran the coat drive through the 8th (I gave God one week to work). People could drop stuff off at our house, our office, but we were willing to drive by and pick up on Saturday with our family. And by the end of it, I think we had hundreds of items, from coats to toys to sweaters, etc. The mayor of Wheaton gave, our friends at ServiceMaster left bags out on their front porch, friends collected from other friends, and of course my Bible study loaded up my van. If those ladies see God working they jump right in in prayer and action. Every time we’d pick something up our kids would shout from the back seat, Thank you Lord for keeping them warm! Just amazing, and the Mission was just so thankful and surprised (I think I told them 20 to 40 coats were coming down, and it took them an hour to unload our van with 3 helpers).

Just a fun lesson in obedience to God, watching him work, such a gift to us. We have had a bunch of people who want to participate with their children next year, really wanting to teach their kids about what really exists in the world. So we’ll probably do something of this form next year, I just don’t know what God will lead us to yet.

Thanks for asking,

Sarah