Pastor Eric had the privelege of serving Thanksgiving dinner in Pittsburgh this year.  Read what happened:

We prepared for 100 and at 1:00 we only had about 30 people there. We decided we would just stick around to see if anyone else came in. Then over the next 4hrs we had steady streams of people coming in. Probably served about 60 – 70 people. Plus a good number of the Somali Bantu were going to come, until they found out it was in the basement of a Catholic Church, and since it was in a church they were not allowed to come. But Scott and another guy with us took a bunch of food up to the one Bantu family’s house and were able to serve them there. The good, but sad thing, was that we kept getting waves of little kids, from 2yrs old to about 13. They would come in as large groups with no adults with them.

They had nothing at their house and the kids kept telling other kids that there was thanksgiving at the church. A lot of the kids were asking for food to take home to their parents. One little girl hung her head low and said that her mom was supposed to take her and her brothers and sisters to her “Nanna’s” house for Thanksgiving. But from what it sounded like, her mom and mom’s boyfriend were either too drunk or high to leave. But the little girl (who was in 7th grade) brought her 5 brothers and sisters (who were from 2 to 10 years old) out to get them dinner and brought back food to take care of her mom. It just broke my heart. But we were able to love on a lot of people and share Christ with many of them. I could go on and on about the many stories of brokenness I was told. But in the midst of that so many had smiles on their faces and a lot of them were very excited about E3 coming to the area and a lot of them said that they wanted to come and asked for more information.

So all in all it went amazing, but it just reminded me that much more why we need to keep pushing forward to bring the hope of the Gospel in this area.

Miss you,

Eric