Feeding Thousands

That is exactly what I helped to do, this past Friday and Saturday. It wasn’t like Jesus did on the shore of Galilee by blessing the two fish and five loaves where He performed the miracle of feeding five thousand plus women and children. It was nothing as dramatic as that. I worked at the Ohiopyle Volunteer Fire Department for their Buckwheat, pancake, and sausage festival.

I’ve been volunteering since 1966 when I started to date my wife Cynthia Morrison. Her dad Bud, her mother Retha, and Cindy worked there, so it was only natural for me to start. I began washing dishes and slowly moved up the ranks, frying the pancakes, buckwheat cakes, and hash brown potatoes until I was commandeered to fry sausage.

I imagine I have been marching the seasoned piggies across those grills for almost forty years. Each grill is 20 inches by 30 inches. There are 12 grills, 6 in a row almost touching each other. Fryers are often responsible to watch the sausage on two of the griddles. The finished product is place into roasters to stay warm until they are carried to the serving areas.

We began to fry continuously from 830 am until 530 pm, stopping only to eat and to grab some fresh air. But we weren’t finished. We had to scrape and clean the grills so they were ready for the next day. I was blessed to have my family come out and join me for the evening meal.

Saturday, our church helped the Seedline Ministry located in Ohio. They print Bibles and books of the Gospel in foreign languages that are then sent to missionaries in the countries where they serve. The copies we assembled, stapled, and cut to size were in the Korean language. By the time we finished, we had completed 8,386 copies of John and Romans to be shipped to a missionary in South Korea. Our copies will be joining others designed with a special cover just for the Korean winter Olympics. We were told that 7 people will read each copy and 1 of them will receive Christ as their Savior. Hopefully, some will find their way into North Korea to feed lost souls there as well.