One of the blessing of doing ministry is that we get to see God work through His people to share His love with others… today was no exception. Three Small groups (actually small group is a misnomer with several of these over 70) from Fielder Road Baptist Church with the BSM & ISI under the leadership of super volunteer Crissy Weddle allowed themselves to be used to share the true heart of Thanksgiving with around 200 students at the UTA.

Meeting at the BSM (Baptist Student Ministry), students were treated to a home cooked Thanksgiving dinner sitting with American families who acted as table hosts who loved on the students. They also got to hear some awesome music led by Greg Speed of our church worship team and heard the story of Thanksgiving shared by Rob Parrett.

During part of the evening, I was talking to Ron Bunyard about the party, peoples, reaction, etc. and Geoff Carter, one of our small group leaders, came up to us and told us that there was a student who wanted to know how to become a Christian and he wanted us to come and help her. Ron, the local ISI minister, went over and shared with her the torn napkin (modified bridge) illustration… I watched from a distance. It was cool watching him and seeing him share something that matters so much to him to a new friend and watching some of our church people seeing it happen and obviously being encouraged by it.

Another God thing with the food and the number of students… It seems like every year God reminds us of His control over it… There is no way we should have had enough food. When we started the evening, our estimate was that we would have half the food compared to last year and while we asked many people to double what they promised, we were concerned. We even asked our volunteers not to eat at first until all the students went by. What we didn’t realize is that students felt uncomfortable eating with their hosts not eating too… still God took care of that. The trickle of students slowed down early in the evening and there was plenty of food left so we opened up the eating to volunteers. We counted up all the tickets and there were over 200 students there AND we had so much food afterward that we had to take lots of leftovers to Arlington Life Shelter. It seems like every time we have a big even we have Jesus’ feeding of the 5000 played out and every time He comes through… I can truly understand now why Jesus had to do the “feeding” illustration twice and they still didn’t get it.

Cool technology angle and another feeding the 5000 story…  During the evening, I was concerned about the seemingly small number of students and I didn’t want our church people to be disappointed. The BSM international ministry intern and I took out our iPhones and logged into our Facebook App and we updated our profile, to remind people about the dinner and we even went into the chat application to see who was on line on Facebook… I noticed a couple of international students that said they were planning on coming and some that said they wouldn’t. I invited them and one couple from Iran ended up coming with several of their friends. It was cool… and still, as I shared before, we handed out over 200 tickets for food… Wow!

Another God thing was we were concerned that we would not get enough pictures about the event to share with students and to use for next year. As late as last weekend we didn’t have anyone to do this important job. Just a couple of days ago, God got us in contact with two of our church’s photographers and Benji & Don, two professional level photographers were available and took some great pictures. I will post these as soon as I get the pictures from them. I know the students will be blessed by seeing themselves and their friends online and the students next year will be blessed to see what to expect so they may want to come.

The tables were awesome too. We put up some butcher block table on each table with crayons so students could “express” themselves and there were some great pictures, comments, etc. It was great. You should see some of the things that the students and families wrote. In addition, each host family was allowed to decorate “their” table and the way the tables looked ran the gamut. It was cools seeing peoples creativity.

It was also great to see many of our teenage kids working so hard to help… Most of them made themselves available to serve drinks and desserts to every person there. They were working hard… I was so proud of them. Further, the younger kids were just great playing together.

In summary… Thanks also to all who provided food, stayed and helped, the young servers and most definitely the table hosts. Thanks to the BSM for hosting it in their building. Thanks to George Anna for leading the kitchen team, the McMuray’s for leading the floor team. The three classes for supporting this in prayer. Thanks to Benji & Don. Thanks so much to Crissy for organizing it all. Finally, it was clear… God was the one that made it all work. Thank you! Thank you! Thank you Lord!