3 TRIPS DOWN, 1 TO GO.......

Man.
I haven't posted since June 10.
But in my defense, I have been busy. I've been on trips to Beach Camp/Ft. Caswell (out of the COUNTY), Bimini (out of the COUNTRY) and Helena, Arkansas (out in the COUNTRY).

I've been gone most of the Tuesday nights, but I was there for the 2nd time this summer this past Tuesday.
We had open-faced sandwiches. They turned out great and we served out just about all of it.

BAILEY  /  DANIELLE  /  SAM  /  SEAN  /  ALEX  /  BRIEN  /  TWIG  /  MITCH  /  WAYNE  /  WADE  /  ELAINE  /  CECELIA  /  HAYLEY  /  CHUCK  /  SHANE  /  JOHN  /  MO-GAN  /  ALEXIS  /  ALEXANDRA  /  CREEEEECH!  /  EBY  /  T.J.  /  MARK  /  HAMPTON  /  were just the people I neede to see and be with on Tuesday.
 Tyler Bordeaux is one of our regular workers on Tuesday night and was with me on the Helena Mission Trip last week, when he found out his Grandmother had passed away. The funeral was on Tuesday in New Jersey. Prayer for him and his family are greatly appreciated.   

There were over 90 people served last week and almost that many this week. Unfortunately, that's the way the summers usually play out. More people needing more help.

I'll be here next Tuesday also, then leave for Guatemala on Thursday. Looking forward to heading back to the Guate for the 4th year in a row.

Love, Peace and chicken grease.                            g

....one of the guys who invented Silly Bandz or the Wii.

  I always expect Tuesday night to be good, but tonight was exceptionally good and for lots of reasons. I'll try to give you as many as I can remember.
First and most importantly, God's goodness and blessings. We had so much food to pass out last night. God provides us with so much great food it's unbelievable. And not leftovers we just reheat. Wonderful fresh stuff that our friends can tell was cooked specifically for them.
To be able to create and cook something, then put it in someone's hands for them to eat and have them come back and tell you how good it was and how much they appreciate you doing it, might be the biggest long term benefit kids get from this ministry. It's the kind of thing that makes an impression and sparks them to do (and lead) similar things when they go off to college and beyond.
Another great thing was a lot of people came and helped last night.
HOLT / KEVIN / CUTTER / MARCUS /CHRIS / CHRISTIAN / TYLER / CHRIS ADAMS / EBY / MARK / /HAMPTON / TJ / TWIG / MITCH / CHUCK (my new favorite person and hero!) / JAMIE / ELAINE / MADELYNE / MERRITT / CECELIA / JOHANNA / CAITLYN / KAYLA / ALEX / ALEXANDRA / BRIANNA / CREEEEECH! / ALEXIS / DAVID / STEPHANIE / TERESA F. / BRIEN / MARILYN / put faith into action by putting food in people's hands last night.


Teresa Fountain was able to obtain a tremendous amount of fruit and vegetables for last nights meal, which was :
CHICKEN SKEWERS
VEGETABLE SKEWERS
BAKED BEANS
DINNER ROLLS
CANTALOUPE SLICES
WATERMELON SLICES
PEACHES
DESSERT
WATER / SWEET TEA / GINGER ALE


It's been at least 4 years since we did any kind of kabobs or skewers, so last night was a real treat. The kitchen was a well oiled machine with people cutting  and skewering, making tea, slicing watermelon and cantaloupe,washing dishes, etc.


We had cherry tomatoes, zucchini, squash, bell peppers, and mushrooms on the vegetable skewers. (That's a lineup I go 1 for 5 on. I like cherry tomatoes but you can have the other stuff.)
We also had peaches to give out as they were leaving.
The second stop guys can't take food back into the Mercy House, so with something like peaches, I take them in to the Night Captain and he hands them out in the morning as they leave.  


Susan Lewis was kind enough to provide half of the chicken we used last night and we greatly appreciate her thinking of us.


At the Sr. Banquet last Sunday night, I looked at the 20 Seniors there and realized 10 of them are die hard Tuesday night regulars. My first thought was That's really neat but my second thought was Yikes!* I'm losing 10 people that help almost every week! 
It'll actually only be 9 because J.BOGGS is staying here to go to UNCW and he'll still come. Plus I won't lose TYLER right away because the current plan doesn't have him leaving for the NAVY until December. Still, that's a big loss. I'm gonna miss seeing them on Tuesdays. BAILEY /SAM /CHRISTIAN / ALEX / DANIELLE / ELLEN / EBY / LIZ /  are heading out! 

HERE'S WHY CHUCK IS MY NEW FAVORITE PERSON AND HERO

I love to read. Books, magazines, online, mysteries, thrillers, historical- everything. But my absolute favorite thing to read is Comic Books. I make no apologies for it. I love them. I did when I was a kid and I do now. I deeply care what happens to Batman, Superman and The Flash every month. Here's the depth of my love for comic books: If I was ever in a "last man on earth" scenario (I am Legend, or the Twilight Zone episode with  Burgess Meredith) , I 'd cope by heading to the comic book store and reading everything they have. And it would take a long while. Oh, I imagine eventually I would get around to missing some of y'all, but ....
Anyway, CHUCK has been coming for a few months now. He's an older gentleman who's a big help, but I've never had a sit down discussion about what he does now or used to do. Chuck noticed that CHRIS ADAMS, the Minister of Students, had on a Justice League T-shirt and a conversation started. Out of the blue he mentioned Green Arrow and Green Lantern and referenced a story done in 1970. I said "Hard Travelin' Heroes" and we proceeded to go back and forth about who drew it(Neal Adams), who wrote it (Denny O'Neal, who inked it (Dick Giordano), etc.
I was amazed. But that was nothing.

Then he says I remember talking to Neal.........
WHAAAAAAAAAAAAT!

Neal Adams? My favorite artist of all time? The most definitive Batman artist of all time?
Yep. CHUCK knows him.

CHUCK used to work in the comic book industry!
CHUCK used to do covers for comic books and paper backs. He starts naming off comics that I have read and characters that I know.
Then he says the magic words: I used to help on the DOC SAVAGE paperback covers.

FLASHBACK: 1970 - I'm a little kid and an older friend of mine lets me read a paperback book called DOC SAVAGE : THE MAN OF BRONZE.

I loved the book, and thought it had the coolest paperback cover of all time. A publisher called BAMA was reissuing the DOC SAVAGE books from the 30's  and 40's with  all new cover art. I liked the cover to the one above so much that I tracked down a poster of it and bought it. Then I started reading every one of the 100+  books I could find.

And now, years later, I'm talking to the guy who played a role in all of that.  Way beyond cool.
I start dropping Hall of Fame names from the comic book industry and he knows them all. 

He had to leave towards the end of the first stop, but we're not done by a long shot.
I'm going to do everything I can to make sure he keeps coming. I don't care if he helps cook or not, I want him for the stories. 
The kids couldn't believe how excited I got the more CHUCK and I talked.
They will one day.
Maybe they'll meet .........

....I could be swayed if someone had a better idea.

2 bags of grits, 180 eggs, 20 lbs. of deer sausage, a #2 can of cheese sauce and 60 slices of white cheese.
That's all you need to feed 80 people a couple of bowls of jacked-up cheese grits.
It wound up being about 10 gallons altogether. We had 5 gallons of grits and 5 gallons worth of the other stuff. Mixed together it was pretty thick and hearty.
We had TEXAS PETE and jalapenos for anyone who wanted to go that route - and lots did. Got back to the church after the 2nd stop with about a ladle and a half left.

The rain earlier in the day actually made for a pleasant first stop. It wasn't muggy like I was expecting. the second stop did turn out that way, but it was still ok.

BAILEY / SAM / DANIELLE / CHRISTIAN / TYLER / J.BOGGS / EBY / JASON / JADE / EMILY / HAMPTON / LIZ / JANE / CHUCK / FIRST TERESA / SECOND TERESA / BRIEN / WAYNE / TWIG / BLAKE / MARK / JOHANNA / MORGZILLA / ALEXIS / CREEEEEEEEEEEECH! / BRIEN / CHRIS / NICK / JOSH / ALEX / STEVE / MARILYN /  are all every bit as colorful and lively on Tuesday nights as their names are on the blog.

John Liverman brought us a pan of baked chicken and a half pan of barbecue from his Rotary Club luncheon. We pulled the chicken off the bone to use next week and put the barbecue in the freezer. John's a good man.

I'm gonna be gone some this summer with YG trips and stuff. People have stepped up and offered to help in my absence. If you want to help and get us through the summer, contact me and let me know(gamyharns@gmail.com). A group of families can get together and do it, a Sunday School class, it doesn't matter. I've already been contacted by another church's youth group and our church's Boy Scout troop.
The reason we need help covering is not that I'm gone, but it's because when I'm gone it's with the Youth Group, and as you notice in the list of who helps every week, they make up a lot of the crowd that comes. I don't have to be replaced- but 20 kids do.

Gene McIntyre and Mitch Cook are the ones responsible for supplying us with Deer Sausage this time. We appreciate it.

We've got chicken to use for next week's meal. Right now I'm leaning toweards some kind of kabobs. 
But I'm flexible........

...slap some peanut butter on it.

MEAT LOAF
ROAST BEEF
MASHED POTATOES
GREEN BEANS
COLE SLAW
A TON OF DESSERTS (more on that later)
SWEET TEA/ WATER/ SODA


TYLER / CHRISTIAN / J.BOGGS / CHRIS / JOSH / HAMPTON / MARK / TOMMY / CHUCK / TWIG / WAYNE / MITCH / SAM / BOONE / WADE / JANE /  BECCA MORGAN / MORGZILLA /CREEEECH! /
ALEXIS / ALEX / JAMIE / ELAINE / CECELIA / CHAMBERLAIN / BRIEN / MARILYN /

Some of the things that happened this week -

Tuesday was the birthday of Charles Grimes Rollins, Jr. aka "TWIG". Jane brought him a cookie cake and shared it with everyone.

CECELIA has been wanting to bake a cake for a couple of weeks and we finally got to it this week. Turned out great. CHAMBERLAIN and JAMIE helped. They actually made two. They iced one with chocolate icing but didn't have enough for the second one. Keep reading and you'll see what they came up with for the second cake.


CHRIS and JOSH Armstrong are home from college for the summer and came down. Always good to see them.

Had a guy visit last week named TOMMY. He's an older gentleman who says he comes to FBC sometimes. He asked about what we we did and said he had worked for a hotel chain in the food services area for a long time. He said he'd like to help and he'd be back. He came back this week.

John Liverman brought a pan of Roast beef and Mashed potatoes, a pan of green beans, and a pan of Banana Puddding from his Rotary Club luncheon. It was catered by Pearl's. That was a huge help because it allowed us to load up the plates.

If it ever comes down to a situation where I'm gonna be allowed a last meal (let's hope not, but.....), roast beef and mashed potatoes will be in the conversation.

If you read the names each week, you might notice CREEEECH! is in there every week. That's Kelsey Creech. She was in my Bible classes at Hoggard, and I never called anybody by their first name, just Mr. or Miss "their last name". And with her, it wasn't even that, it was just her last name. And when she walked in for the first time every day, it was longer and louder-CREEEEEEEEECH!
Well a couple of weeks ago I was at the comic book store looking in the dollar boxes and saw a Comic called "The Creech". I grabbed it and gave it to her last night. She got a kick out of it and that's what I was shooting for.

ALEX Miller came late and she'd never driven by herself to the 2nd stop. For some reason, she drives a big ol' full size truck. She called and got directions and I told her to just pull in the parking lot when she got there.
I saw her pull up and go past us. About 10 minutes later she came walking up. I asked where she'd been. She said"I'm not a good parallel parker". She'd been wrestling that truck into a parking space out on the street the whole time!

We set out the Banana Pudding at the 2nd stop and told them they had a choice between that and yellow cake with chocolate icing for dessert. It was never even a contest. Only 3 people had opted for the cake  by the time the Banana Pudding ran out. 
Duh. We're in the South.


My night was already complete the minute BECCA MORGAN showed up. I love BECCA MORGAN. If you don't, it's only because you haven't met her yet. She just graduated from Davidson and is home for the week before she heads for training with TEACH AMERICA. She'll be teaching High School in Charlotte next year. I have known her since she was very little. She tried to bust me last night. We were talking and a kid walked over and I said something to them and BECCA said You still using that line? You were using that when I was in Youth Group!
It's all right. I still love her. Plus, she's right. You only got to have 6 years worth of material, then you can start using it all over again.

When we started up to the first stop, I let Cecelia stay down to ice her cakes. When she came up, she showed me the chocolate iced cake and then showed me the other one. It had a fancy looking crumbly topping on it. She said it was pineapple and rice krispies with some butter. ?. I didn't even know we had any of that stuff. I asked her who made that? 
Take a guess.
TOMMY. 
First week in the kitchen and he whips up some kind of gourmet topping for cake out of scratch.
Hope he comes back. I would've told her to just.....

Gotta start posting these when I write 'em.........

BAILEY / SAM / CHRISTIAN / J.BOGGS / LIZ / MARK / RYAN / ELAINE / MERRITT / ELLEN  /HALEY / BLAKE / HAMPTON / JASON / TYLER / TWIG / WAYNE / TERESA / TERESA  /MITCH / SEAN /   make the kitchen downtown a great place to be on Tuesday night.
It was "Breakfast for Supper" time again. Instead of serving the sausage separately, though, we crumbled sausage into the pancakes once we poured them on the griddle so it was in the pancake. Heard about it being done that way so we tried it. It was okay. We didn't do all of them like that, though. Believe it or not, some people don't like sausage.
I like to pour the batter and let it cook, drop a cooked sausage patty in the center, cover it with batter and then flip it. Then when you're done - you've got a sausage patty inside your pancake.  NICE.  It also works for bacon, you just have to pour a strip of batter instead of a circle. It looks cool, too; a plate full of long pancakes instead of round ones.

Twig's stepson Hayden is an RA at N.C. State. He and a group of them from University Towers were down for training and helped serve at the first and second stops.

Tuesdays with Warden

This week's meal was planned and provided by the Fellowship Sunday School class. This crowd was organized and ready to go. I made sure I got there at 5:55 because I told them 6:00. I walked in and they already beans and corn on the stove, and the ham sliced, ready to go in the oven.
I could get used to that.
They came in two waves. The first wave was the cooking wave and then the serving wave came around 7:00, ready to carry food out and start passing out food. 
I had kids come, too, so I set up as much interaction between the two groups as I could. I sort of assigned kids places to hang out to show the adults where things were and to answer questions about how we did things. They liked having answers for the adults.

The menu
BAKED HAM
CORN
GREEN BEANS
DINNER ROLLS
DESSERT
SWEET TEA/ WATER

It was another one of those great days where heaven just opened up and rained food on us. We were given a huge box of fruit, somebody brought a big garbage bag full of artisan breads and bagels and we had more cookies than we could use for the meal.
Hmmmm .....bread....fruit....cookies.....The Walkaway Special!
We took the lunch meat we had and made ham and cheese bagels and peanut butter bagels, and tossed them in lunch bags with a couple of pieces of fruit and 2 cookies. 
Nice.

WAYNE AND KATIE HILL /  GAYE THOMAS / JIMMY AND TOM WALLACE / GLENDA AND JIM CURRIN / LINDA GURGANUS / VICKIE PORTER / MIKE AND ANNE COCKERHAM / CHARLES LIESE / JERRI ROGERS / KERRY TAYLOR were the members of the class who were able to come and be a part of the night. I'd also like to recognize and thank  the members of the class who weren't able to come but provided money and prayed for us. We appreciate their efforts.
WAYNE / STEVE / ANNA / J.BOGGS / TYLER / EBY / CHRISTIAN / JASON / BAILEY / SHANE / PEYSON / ALEXIS / CREEEECH! / MO-GAN / BLAKE /  are great people that do amazing things on Tuesday nights.

Not so quick story: Mike Cockerham is in the Fellowship class and came Tuesday night. I haven't called him "Mike" or "Mr. Cockerham" in years. He's always "Warden".
He was a chaperon with us years ago on a ski trip. We had a rule about no CD players on the trip because we wanted kids interacting not secluding. Most of the kids brought them anyway and there were several wearing them on the bus ride. Don saw them and we talked about it and decided everyone that brought one would miss the morning ski session. "Mike" volunteered to stay back at the house with the rule breakers. We started joking about house arrest and when we came in for lunch I saw him and said" How'd it go, Warden?" 
And to this day that's the only name I've ever needed for him.
He doesn't call me "Gary" either, but you'll have to ask him about the reason for that.              g

......Mother's Day Special !

Boggs has writer's block and hasn't posted so I'm going to recap last week real quick and then move on to last night.
He served a great meal of baked chicken, mac'n cheese, and homemade banana pudding. Knocked the meal out of the park. Had a beautiful spring night for it. I stayed out of the kitchen so J.Boggs would have to be the voice and the ramrod for getting things done. He did a great job all the way around. He'll fill in on the rest.

Last Wednesday, another one of our regular Seniors, Tyler Bordeaux, held a chili supper as part of his Sr. Project. It was a donation affair and the proceeds went to us, the Tuesday Night Feeding Ministry. It was very well attended and he raised over $900. Very  nice. He did a great job.

Wayne and Katie Hill donated 5 Boston pork butts to us from a fundraiser that Wayne is part of. It was a no-brainer to go with BBQ sandwiches this week. We thawed some brunswick stew we had saved, put some baked beans in it, got some cole slaw, and used the pans of mac'n cheese we saved from last week and we were good to go! We also switched it up a little this week. Instead of Sweet Tea we served.....Lemonade. That cool refreshing drink. (Eddie Murphy reference!)

Everything outside was wet so the first stop was served inside, which is always kinda nice but different.
We serve in Fireside Hall which is comfortable and roomy but it feels muted. No traffic noise, everybody is aware of their volume (most people anyway)....it's different. Time goes faster, too. We looked outside, saw some blue and decided to roll the dice on the next stop and set up outside instead of fixing plates to hand out. Turned out to be a good call.

One of our guys is leaving to go to S.C. and start an Electrical business with a partner. Next week will probably be his last. His name's Omar and we'll be praying for him. He's going to bring his daughter to church Sunday.
BBQ SANDWICHES
COLE SLAW
BRUNSWICK STEW
MAC'N CHEESE
DESSERTS
LEMONADE/WATER .....were fixed and served by....

 ... ELAINE / CECELIA / HAMPTON  / EBY / J.BOGGS / TWIG / TERESA / BRIEN / MITCH / WAYNE / STEVE /
TYLER / CHRISTIAN / MO -GAN / ALEXIS / BLAKE / CREEEEEEECH! / JASON / LITTLE THUG / JADE / ALYSSA / ELLYN /
The thing kids like about making BBQ sandwiches is tearing up the Boston butts and chopping them into BBQ. Our guys like it "wet" so we mix Sonny's Sweet BBQ sauce into it. My spectrum for how I like my BBQ is wide enough to be classified as "It's all good".
 So, I'm easy like that.

Gonna be a showing of THE BLIND SIDE this weekend at FBC Cinema 1. You're invited to come hang out with us and watch it. Admission is free, concessions are free, sodas are free.
For those of y'all who forget what day it is until you get to church, it could turn into a .......