.....Sharing is Caring.

2 things:

J.Boggs did his Sr. Project on Tuesday night. I tried my best to step back and let him take charge and give direction. 
 I thought I'll let him write the blog, too.
So look for that in a day or two.

Tuesday night after we were done Sam Gates sent me a text about how much she enjoyed it and thanking me for letting her do it. I got to thinking that other people might feel like that and others would like to hear it.
So I think Sunday night I'm gonna grab some of the ones that help and set up a new blog with open access that the ones who help can log on to and share their experiences. That way it's more than just my voice being heard about what's happening on Tuesday nights.

Probably what I should have done in the first place.
You know what Karl Marx said........

.....I'm 0 for 2.

I wrote this the day after the NCAA championship game and thought I had posted it. WRONG. My bad. Here you go.........
The Super Bowl party we do for our friends on the street is always a blast and getting bigger each year.
3 years ago we watched the NCAA Championship Basketball game and it was fun but the last 2 years I've been out of town on the Guys Sr. High Surf Trip and not able to be in Wilmington.
Checked the calendar and saw I'd be in town for the game this year. Told the guys at the Mercy House if they wanted to watch it I'd come get them and take them back to the church and we'd watch it there.

 Because it tipped off so late, I knew it wouldn't be a lot of guys. They go to bed early and have to be out by 6:00 a.m., so a 9:15 tip off is too late for some of them.  I didn't ask for much help because of that also. Not a lot of people want to be downtown until midnight watching a game however good a cause it's for.
 I went by around 8:30 and grabbed the ones who wanted to come, which was around 10 guys.
Pruden came down about 8:45 and gave me a hand.
We had Pizza Rolls, Bagel Bites, Baked Potato Chili, and Sweet Tea. We ate before the game and had ice cream at half time. I bought a variety pack of ice cream items (sandwiches, fudge bars, eskimo pies, and nutty buddy's). I gave everybody their choice of one at halftime. Couple of minutes into the 2nd half one of the guys says You got any more of those Nutty Buddy's? I said yeah.
Can I get another one?
Sure......and everybody else asked for another one.
10 minutes later ....same thing.
Every single one of them hit me for thirds on ice cream treats.
And you know what? Good for them.
It was a lot of fun. Because there weren't that many of us, everybody was sitting on a couch with plenty of room. The noise level was low and a more relaxed atmosphere than the Super Bowl.
We always have a good time seeing who wants which team to win. I talk junk about the team I don't want to win and they jump on it and talk back.
Between the Super Bowl and this game ......

.......makes me grin.

Hands on Wilmington
John Liverman's Rotary Club Luncheon
Laura Barkley"s Wedding


What do these all have in common? They're the reason we didn't have to buy a single thing this week for the meal.


Hands on Wilmington was a big volunteer push this past weekend that gave us 28 pizzas. John Liverman brought us BBQ Chicken, Collards, and Sweet Potatoes from his luncheon and David and Ann Barkley brought us pasta salad, fresh vegetables, and turkey from their daughter's wedding reception.


I said last post it was a good week to be behind the table because we had so much to give. Well, this week was a great week, because we had even more than last week.
We split it up and served everything except pizza at the first stop. We took the leftovers to the second stop with us. At the second stop we served the pizza first (3-4 slices) and then offered the first stop leftovers for seconds.
It worked out well.


And again, it required nothing on our part except to be willing to receive it and pass it on. 
Just be Hands and Feet.


 MO-GAN  /  KILLER  /  ALEXANDRA  /  PEYSON   /  SHANE  /  HAMPTON  /  MITCH  /  TWIG  /  CHUCK  /  MIKE  /  MIKE'S WIFE  /  MARK  /  ALEX  /  J.BOGGS  /  TYLER  /  CECILIA  /  ZOOEY  /  ELAINE  / BRIEN  /  TERESA  /  DAVID /  HIS 2 GIRLS  /  SAM  /  DANIELLE   / and  JADE  are people I like to spend my Tuesday nights with.


  We pray a lot over the course of the night. Before we go up to serve, Grace at the first stop, before we leave for the second stop, Grace again, and then to close the night. Most times I ask one of the youth to say the Grace (sometimes one of our friends will volunteer).
It's cool to watch them get better and more confident at it. I remind them they are praying to God, and not to any of us. They pray some pretty incredible and humbling prayers when given the chance. 


For the Record
PIZZA (second stop)
 BBQ CHICKEN
PASTA SALAD
BAKED ZITI
COLLARDS
BEANS/CORN
SWEET POTATOES
DESSERT
SWEET TEA/ WATER


Next week J.Boggs is gonna run the show as part of his Sr. Project. He passed out a survey of services for the Homeless this week as part of that also.
His menu for next week is Baked Chicken, Mac'n Cheese, Dinner rolls, and Banana Pudding. We sat down last night and walked through everything he needed to get and needed to do for next week. J.Boggs will do fine.  
Tyler is doing a chili supper as part of his Sr. Project with the donations going toward the Tuesday night ministry. It's April 28 at the Activity Supper from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. Drop by and help him out if you can. He's a good guy.


I forgot to mention this in the last post. The first choice for the next movie we see on Sunday afternoon is THE BLIND SIDE.....you want to know what their next choice to watch is?
TRANSFORMERS.
And that just .........

....you're welcome to come watch it with us.

Sunday at the Movies went great!
I went by the Mercy House on my way to church Sunday morning to remind them I'd be coming by in the afternoon to pick up anyone who wanted to come down to the church and watch IRON MAN.
TJ ALEXANDER, ISAAC, EBY, HAMPTON COOK and MITCH COOK came down to help and TJ was the only of them who'd seen it, so that was cool. It was like a reward for helping.
To give it an authentic movie viewing experience, we had 3 flavors of Vic's popcorn (regular, white cheddar and caramel), an assortment of candy bars and Pepsi's.
They ate and drank it all. There was a little popcorn left and they took it back with them.
For me, the coolest thing about it happened 15 minutes into the movie, when I became aware of the sound of people furiously eating popcorn. I looked around and all I saw was a group of people intensely watching a movie. Not youth and adults, not homeless and the fortunate.....just people all doing the same thing - enjoying a movie.
Exactly what I was hoping for. Nice.

I was asking them about doing it again and what they might like to see. After some suggestions from me, the general consensus seemed to be THE BLIND SIDE.

I'll tell you on this site when we do it again. If you haven't seen THE BLIND SIDE,........

....to pray for Pittsburgh.

I was buying stuff to cook this week and I was thinking that we were blessed to have resources to do the ministry with. Amazingly blessed. Then I got to wondering what I'd do if I didn't have any money or food for this week. Would I be able in faith to just lay it at God's feet and believe in him to provide? Show up and have other people show up, with nothing but faith that God would provide. 

I'd like to think I would but I don't know. I do know that after I bought the stuff for this week,  I recieved two phone calls, one on Monday night and the other on Tuesday afternoon, giving me food to use. One was a full-size steam pan of Pasta Primaverra and the other was a full-size steam pan of pasta and Italian Sausage. If those two things were the only things I had to serve, I think I could've made it last for both stops.  Hmmmmmmmmmm.........

What did we have in addition to those 2 things? Glad you asked

KIELBASA
MASHED POTATOES
CORN ON THE COB
DESSERT
SWEET TEA/WATER

It was so good. My original train of thought a low country boil and how good that would be (corn, sausage, red potatoes, and shrimp all cooked in the same pot). And it's almost do-able except for the shrimp. Shrimp is muis, muis expensivo.
But I could do the kielbasa, fix mashed potatoes instead (cheaper than red potatoes and better) and corn on the cob. That's a killer meal.
So that's what we did.

We had brown mustard, sauerkraut, bacon, TEXAS PETE, cheese, butter for the corn and yellow mustard. 
So good.
Plus the pasta dishes, which were just as good.
We were overflowing with blessings to share with our friends. It was a GREAT night to stand on the line and serve.
One of the desserts was a huge choclate cake. Big hit.

 In case you're wondering (and I doubt you were) I like my corn on the cob with butter and TEXAS PETE. Try it.

BAILEY  /  SAM  /  DANIELLE  /  ALEX  /  J.BOGGS  /  TYLER  /  MARK  /  BLAKE  /  MERRITT  /  PEYSON  /  HAMPTON  /  ELAINE  /  CECELIA  /  ALEXANDRA  /  BRIANNA  /  MO-GAN  /  CREEEEEECH!  /  STEVE  /  BRIEN  /  NEW TERESA  /  NOT NEW BUT I BETTER NOT CALL HER OLD TERESA  /  ANNA  /  JADE  /  JASON  /  ELLEN  /  MITCH  /  WAYNE  /  were champs tonight.

Twig was out of town. One of the running jokes about that is when we get together at the end of the night to pray, I always say Ya'll, Twig is out of town. He's in Pittsburgh(or where ever). So remember....... 

Playing Soon at a Church Near You........IRON MAN

So...... I'm watching the NCAA Championship game at the church with some guys from the Mercy House, which is our second stop on Tuesday nights. Part of me was just watching the game, part of me was on "I'm in charge" mode, constantly looking around making sure everybody was all right and part of me was just kind of thinking about the guys and what the rest of their week would be like. 
When we watch the SUPER BOWL with them, the commercials are a big part of it. That's part of the entertainment we expect. But for this game, it's mostly just regular commercials trying to sell stuff. I got to thinking about what these guys thought about the things they were seeing. They don't watch a lot of TV, they don't have much discretionary income, they hadn't watched any of the other games.
Then the IRON MAN 2 trailer came on. 
Some one said What is that?
Somebody else said I don't know. I think it's a movie.

In my head I'm thinking This looks cool. It might be as good as the first one and I've seen it 20 times in the past 2 weeks.
They're seeing it for the first time and wondering what it is.
How far away is my world from theirs?

I ask them Have any of you seen the first IRON MAN movie? 
Nobody had.
The gears start turning. 
I ask them Would you like to see it?
All of them gave some kind of affirmative answer.
I said So if I came by and grabbed y'all on a Sunday afternoon and brought you back here, you'd watch Iron Man with me? 
Everybody said yeah.

Well all right.
Nobody is in the youth room at the church on a Sunday afternoon. My Sunday afternoons are as free as I make them. Couple of gallons of Sweet Tea, some popcorn and it's on like Donkey Kong.  

So I told them we would do it. I'd come grab  them and we'd come back and watch it. 
As they were getting back on the bus a couple of them stopped and mentioned it and asked when and one guy said Don't do it too early cause I don't get back from church until 1:30. I laughed and said Don't worry. The next night as we were feeding, 4 different guys came up and wanted to know when we were gonna do it. They're kinda jazzed about seeing a movie!
  
One of the guys said he hadn't been to a movie in 15 years. I take them for granted. I see movies all the time. Whenever I want. If somebody wants to go see something I've already seen, I'll go again. I saw two movies at the theater back to back  a couple of weeks ago.
Different worlds.

Looks like we're going to do it this Sunday afternoon. I'll probably see if a couple of the youth want to help.
I'll let you know how it goes.      
                        g

....might not have any kind of bread at all!

We have a wonderful resource at a bread outlet who provides us with just about any kind of bread we need, whenever we need it. I've mentioned her before. We call her the Bread Lady.
This week we were doing Hot Dogs. She didn't have any hot dog buns available. She gave us regular sandwich bread instead. No big deal.  It wouldn't be the first time I'd ever eaten a hot dog on white bread.

We've been grilling the hot dogs for a while now, but I figured we'd boil them this time just to do something different. And since we were doing something different, we threw some OLD BAY Seasoning in the water while they were boiling. I like OLD BAY a lot. It's like a dry version of TEXAS PETE.  I put it in and on a lot of things.

Basically we served an open faced hot dog. We split the wiener and put it split -side down then fixed it however they wanted. We had ketchup, mustard, cheese, mayo, onions, chili, cole slaw, sauerkraut and TEXAS PETE. If they wanted it folded over, fine. If not, they just ate it with a fork. Worked out fine.

We started calling it a "Poor Man's Hot Dog" because I told them we were using white bread because I was a poor man and too broke to buy buns. It just kinda stuck after that- Poor Man's Hot Dog.

POOR MAN'S HOT DOG
COLE SLAW
DESSERT
SWEET TEA/WATER

TWIG  /  BRIEN  /  NEW TERESA  /  MITCH  /  CHRISTIAN  /  SAM  /  TYLER  /  BAILEY  /  JOHANNA  /  MARK  /  KILLER  /  MERRITT  /  MAGGIE  /  HAMPTON  /  PEYSON  /  MO-GAN  /  CREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEECH!  /  LAURA

We saw a bigger crowd at both stops then we had the past month. I'm sure there's a reason, I just don't know exactly what it is. There are a lot of factors and they aren't always apparent or consistent. We just serve until one of two things come to an end...the line or the food.
I remember one time when it was obvious the food we had that night was not going to last as long as the line was. I decided to send someone to Burger King with $40 and get 40 Whopper Jr.'s. I thought about the best way to do it and then I called Brien over and slipped her some cash and told her what we needed and to hustle. I called Brien specifically because I knew she'd get it done the fastest, PLUS, if there was any hitch in the plan, she'd make a good decision and get it done anyway. That's the kind of person she is. If I'm in a bind, I like to know who the go-to people are. Brien is a go-to person. She called ahead and told them she was coming and after making sure she was on the level, they did it and she got back as quick as any one could've. I think we wound up with about 3 Whopper Jr.'s left.
That's the only time we've ever needed to do that. But it left a big impression on me. Now I'm bad for looking at what we have and wondering if it's enough and adding things. Then when we serve I see we would've been right on the money without what I added.
Says something about me I guess. More faith needed, less reliance on my opinion.

Broke out the fitted table cloths this week.  Very nice!
Liking them a lot. I think I'm gonna call Kinko's and see if they could print something like a picture on one of them and see what it would cost. That could be fun. But if it costs too much, next time the Poor Man's Hot Dog.......

.....last week was an 8 1/2.

Didn't post after last week. My bad.
But in my defense, I wasn't able to be there and I didn't talk to anyone about it until the weekend.
But when I did talk to someone they told me it went great. Kelly Leger brought the youth group from Wrightsville Beach Methodist downtown to let them plan, cook and serve the meal as a way to plant a missions seed with the group. They did a baked Potato Bar for the meal, which our guys always love.

As for why I wasn't able to be there, I was down for the count with..... a staph infection.
Yep. A staph infection.
Last week was Spring Break. The Thursdaybefore that I started feeling a knot on my back. Friday it began to hurt something fierce. I couldn't reach it or see it but it was killing me. Saturday was miserable. I knew I was going to have see the doctor about it but I wanted to hold on until Monday because I was planning to get a Physical over Spring Break anyway and I could just double it up. Plus, I hate Urgent Care places. They cost three times as much as the regular guys and you wind up having to go the regular guys anyway. I just don't like them.
BUT....Saturday night and Sunday morning I was burning a fever and around 4:00 p.m. I broke down and went to Medac. They told me I had a staph infection and it was abcessed, probably because of rubbing on my shirt in the truck and when sitting in chairs. He laid me down, numbed it up and went to work. When he was done there was a hole in my back that hurt like crud. He put a gauze pack in the hole and bandaged me up. Told me to come back Tuesday and he'd take it out and look at it again. He gave me prescriptions for an antibiotic and oxycodone(?). I took the antibiotic. Left the oxycodone alone.
The bandage was huge and now the thing hurt worse, even though the pressure was relieved. Moving around and using my arms hurt a lot. Wearing a shirt was enough to make it hurt. I spent most of the week laying on my left side reading and watching everything I'd DVR'ed and hadn't seen yet.
He also told me to soak it in Epsom Salts 3 times a day. Tons of fun.
So that's why I wasn't there and that's why I didn't post anything last week. 
So....on a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being free ice cream for the rest of my life and 10 being a Duke win tonight, ...........
(I expect no sympathy and deserve no sympathy from people who had to work last week and never get Spring Breaks to begin with.)