"Healing the brokenhearted" Luke 4:18

I Kings 17:66 "The RAVENS brought him bread and meat in the morning, and bread and meat in the evening; and he drank from the brook."

One of the highlights of this year's Mardi Gras Outreach in New Orleans was our community outreach in the hard-hit St. Bernard Parish (East New Orleans) on Saturday February 25th.

Having been blessed to utilize the New Orleans Ministry and Command Center as our RAVEN CAMP site (set up by the Church of God), we had a ready made opportunity to take advantage of 1) an area of the city that had experienced great devastation 2) a warehouse full of food and supplies needing to be dispersed to a people with enormous needs.

By 10:00 AM that morning cars began to line up on Judge Perez Drive in front of the relief center. Within an hour the line was numbering more than 200 cars! The team leaped into action and assembled just over 200 boxes of food stuffs and cleaning items to be given to those so patiently waiting in line for help. We had planned on beginning at 1:00 PM, but the need is such in that area that people are willing to wait for hours on end for things that most of us would just take for granted.

By 12:00 NOON, all 200 (+) initial boxes had been given out and the line was longer than ever! we then went to a "double line" and just placed the paleted itmes directly into each vehicle as they made their way to the front of the line. During the distribution it rained on the team twice--but they just kept on going! The final car came through for supplies as nightfall came and the final count was probably around 600 cars, representing 1000's of family members effected by Hurricane Katrina.

"I was hungry, did you feed Me?" Jesus asked in Matthew 25. "Yes, Jesus we did." The Raven Team answered that day.

While the food, cleaning items, and supplies were a great joy to distribute, the true "relief" was that each person had the Gospel spoken AND demonstrated to them several times in the course of their wait.

We had placed team members at about 20 yard intervals up and down the street to minister to each car of people that came--and MANY CAME TO JESUS THAT DAY! It was such a blessing to see someone on each side of an automoblie ministering to a husband and wife or mother and daughter.

Many tears flowed and many lives were changed that day through the power of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and about 125 faithful servants willing to "go tell" through their actions and words.