...I will start running and yelling at the top of my lungs to let her know where we are.

Smithfield Pork in Tar Heel gave us some meat last week. Not the amount they gave us a couple of years ago (6,000 lbs), but two big bone in tenderloins and two large boneless tenderloins. Twig put them on the cooker around lunch today and we started working on them about 6:15. We took it off the bone and made a big pan of pulled pork, while others took the tenderloins and used the electric slicer to cut them into nice sized slices. It was very tender and moist. we had a large steam tray pan full of pork for the folks tonight.
Make 5 gallons of mashed potatoes, 3 1/2 gallons of corn, assorted desserts, and 7 gallons of Sweet Tea, ...we were good to go.

(I have realized I might actually leave a legacy and this is what it will be: I taught kids how to make instant mashed potatoes and incredibly sweet tea in large quantities. I can live with that)

MAGGIE/ MADDIE /JOHN /J.BOGGS /JON HILL/ LIZ /T.J. /CHAMBERLAIN PEYTON /ELLEN /HAMPTON /GEORGE/ BLAKE/ STEVE /ANNA /TERESA /BRIEN/ TWIG/ 6'7"SEAN /LAURA /JANE /CREEEECH! /ALEAXANDRA/ JOSH /SARA MICHAEL /MITCH were the hands and feet to God's goodness for the folks tonight

After the heat of the day earlier, the evening felt great. We get daylight all through the first stop, which is nice. The area we serve the first stop is the courtyard in front of the connector building between our church and the WLI building. It's such a nice spot for what we do there. It's almost hard to remember doing it anywhere else, but we did and it's my stubborn fault we were so long moving to where we are now.

I remember being so adamant about continuing to serve across the street. I had my reasons.
1. We started there ( Me and change don't always get along.)
2. People knew we were going to be in that spot.
3. Someone was telling us we couldn't do it there.

I didn't say they were good reasons.

Some lady was griefing us about being on public property, and some public ordinance, blah blah blah. The kind of person I immediately size up and write off as a pain and just looking to make life miserable for us. She called the police on us two weeks in a row even though we had permits.
The police were very nice and sympathetic to us and had no problem with it but we finally just said "Bonk it" and decided to move to church property. I was surprised when they said we could do it in the courtyard. I thought we'd do in parking lot out back or underneath in the parking garage. But they said sure and we started setting up there. For several weeks I would go over to the old spot and direct people across the street to the new one.
And we've never looked back.

But a couple of less than solid reasons and a petty resistance to being told what to do by someone I didn't like, kept us there when a much better spot was literally around the corner. I try to keep that lesson in mind as I do stuff these days.
Not always good at it, but getting better.

There was one other reason that I resisted moving from there. I've never told anyone this, but I will now.
The spring after we started, the numbers coming to eat was dwindling, as was the amount of youth to cook and serve. One night I prayed that if the crowd on both sides was low I was going to stop and start back in the fall. That was the night it was just me and Gary McKnight and the woman gave me $950 and told me to keep feeding those guys. And we have.
But what if she came back one night to see if were still feeding those guys......and we weren't in that spot?
Would she look around to see if we'd moved?
Or would she think I'd stopped?
I didn't want her to come back and not see us in that spot.
It was kinda important to me.
I didn't want to admit that to anyone, but it was.
But we moved, and it was the thing to do. We should've done it before we did.

Now I'll tell you another thing I've never told anyone else, either.
Every week I wander to the front of the courtyard and look down the block to where we used to feed, just in case.
'Cause if I see her car down there.......