NYC The Bowery/Mercy Chefs Outreach May 2008
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In 2006, Paul & Mandy Yoder, a couple who attends CC Sarasota, felt led by the
Lord to go to NYC for 6 months in 2007 to help feed the homeless. Shortly
thereafter Mandy was diagnosed with cancer. They changed their plans and Mandy
immediately began her cancer treatments. Many of us gathered around her and
Paul and prayed intensely for her healing, their comfort and God's will to be done.
Shortly after our NC training camp, we received a call for prayer, the doctors had
found a mass in her body and she was scheduled for additional tests. We prayed
and the results came back, the mass was scar tissue, her cancer was completely
gone, she was 100% healed in what the doctors have said was not possible, it had to
be a miracle from God! She still needed to complete some treatments. They
decided to continue with God's call to go to NYC in January of 08 and when the
time came they did just that!
Through a series of events, they were led to The Bowery Mission, one of the oldest,
largest and most respected mission and recovery ministries in the city. Paul and
Mandy have a business back in Sarasota so they would travel home every week or
so keep track of things.
Gary and I had been talking about what could we do with Mercy One when it wasn't
being deployed to a disaster. This raised a tough question because you never know
when you'll be needed for disaster relief. We determined that the end of spring,
beginning of summer, end of fall, beginning of winter, would be a good time to do
something a little different that we could commit too in advance. Now we just had
to figure out what it was we could do that would be a good fit for the mission of
Mercy Chefs.
We had our first Spring Training Camp of 08 with a weekend between the two
events, a weekend that the Yoders were home. Church had allowed me to have the
pulpit for a few minutes to show a video from the first camp and let the
congregation know what we were doing and how they could join us. Part of the
video had a picture of Gary and his Mercy Chefs trailer.
As Paul and Mandy watched the video they thought, wouldn't it be a good thing to
get Mercy Chefs involved with The Bowery and take the ministry on the road?
They were already planning a huge event in May and this might allow them to
make it even bigger! Pastor Carl started teaching and since I had already attended
the first service, I was busy doing other things in the church.
After the service ended I was walking in the hall and saw Paul and Mandy I
thought I heard God say, talk to Paul about taking Mercy Chefs to NYC to help the
Bowery. As soon as Paul saw me he remembered the video and his thoughts and
started heading over to talk to me! After our brief conversation, I contacted Gary
and the wheels started moving, we were heading to NYC!
We quickly got extra volunteers to come up from Sarasota to help and before we
knew it, MJ and I were on a plane to Virginia Beach to pick up Mercy One!
Getting a 32' 5th wheel into NYC was no picnic, but we made it. We got in just in
time for a late dinner and then went to bed.
Tuesday-we arrived at the mission and immediately started prepping for
Wednesday’s outreach. The girls were able to serve food on the line for lunch that
day. Later in the day, we left Ray at the mission prepping and Paul, Mandy, MJ
and I took off to help with a soup kitchen at Thompkins Square Park, about a 15
minute ride from the mission. It was cold and raining and we were able to give the
people some hot soup and also provided some loaves of bread for them to take with
them. We served a little over 75 people.
Wednesday-we served lunch and dinner at the Bowery Mission-one of the oldest,
biggest and most respected missions in NYC, they were established in 1876!
Unfortunately we didn’t count plates that day. A conservative count was that we
served over 500 meals! This was a long day as we left around 7:30 and didn’t get
back to the Yoder’s until after 9:30. We also had to deal with rain and cold
weather, at least for us Floridians! Our lunch menu was Wild Alaskan Salmon a la
Paul or baked chicken served with rice smothered in homemade gravy, green
beans almondine and salad. Drinks were also provided. For dinner we served pizza
and hamburgers dressed all the way with potatoes O’White, rice and some
scrumptious desserts!
Thursday-we took Mercy One on the road; we went to Brooklyn to Maria
Hernandez Park. I wasn’t looking forward to pulling the 32’ Mercy One trailer
around the city but the Lord worked everything out beautifully and we had no
problems whatsoever. We had anticipated having 150 for lunch, this doubled and
we ended up serving a little over 300! Everything went like clock work. We served
chicken stew over rice with drinks. The Bowery also provided a pantry of items to
give to the people to take with them.
Friday-we again took the show on the road and went to Chelsea Park in
Manhattan. We served some awesome beef stew over rice accompanied by a tossed
salad with dressing and a fresh fruit salad. We were joined by two different groups
of people, one was a local group that helps out every Friday at this park, usually
they just do a soup kitchen, and the other was a group of people from Louisiana
who were working with Mission New York and were on loan to us. The local group
brought drinks and some awesome fresh bread and also provided a ministry table
to talk to those who were getting food. Once again the Bowery also provided a
pantry of items for the people to take home with them. Again we were told there’d
be around 150 and we ended up serving a little over 300!
This however was not the end of our day. We had started out at 6 to get things
ready. Once back at the mission, we had to prep for Saturday’s grand finale! Jim,
Kelly, MJ and I started preparing the next day’s food. We had anticipated a staffed
kitchen on our return, but came back to an empty kitchen! After an hour or so
the crew was growing weary at the unending work that was in front of us. Was a
mutiny in store??!! Finally we were able to get a couple of the Bowery guys to lend
us a hand, but it still looked as if we'd never get the task completed without
working through the night! A few minutes later 10-12 local middle school girls
showed up unannounced and eager to help! Once again God had a plan; all we had
to do was to be faithful in what He had called us to do while He took care to provide
all that we needed! A couple of hours later, everything was complete, the kitchen
was clean and at 8 PM we were walking out to get dinner.
We headed out worn out and dirty to find some of NYC’s famous pizza! Since we
were all wearing our Mercy Chefs shirts and hats, several people asked us what
they meant and we were able to share the ministry and what God was doing
through us in NYC!
Saturday-The “Grand Finale”!!-we had a lot of work to do; we needed to be at
Thompkins Square Park between 7 and 7:30 as we had promised to serve
breakfast. Jim and Kelly were troopers and met us at 5:30 AM to start loading all
of the food that we had prepared the night before into Mercy One. At 6 the Bowery
Boys started showing up. It turns out that weekends and holidays are pretty much
off times for most of these guys. We were told on Friday that we'd need to provide
most of the help ourselves needed for the outreach on Saturday. I quickly did the
math and decided that we’d be short several people. I immediately started asking
many of the guys who had helped us throughout the week. Every person that we
asked to help gladly accepted the call, even after I told them how early they’d be
needed. One of the guys was fairly new to the program and had been asking to go
on an outreach for weeks and you should’ve seen the smile on his face when I
asked him as he eagerly said yes!
We quickly got everything loaded up and headed out. When we arrived there was
already a line waiting for us! We served eggs a la Chef Paul along with fresh and
hot cinnamon rolls; we decided to leave the frosting off since it would make a big
mess! We served a little over 200 for breakfast.
We immediately got things cleaned up and started cooking lunch. There was
already a line for lunch before we finished serving breakfast. Word had spread as
to what all we were doing and everyone wanted to have some of the food that God
was providing!
We were serving wild Alaskan salmon a la Paul II or chicken again, this time with
potatoes au Jim, he asked how do I season this stuff, my reply was add a lot of salt,
pepper and garlic to the vegetables that we had already chopped to add the night
before. He asked, how do I know when I’ve got enough garlic, I replied that when
he could strongly smell the garlic, add a little more and he was finished! He did an
awesome job! We also served green beans almondine, fresh salad with homemade
dressing, and Mandy made some cookies to hand out for dessert! Once again the
Bowery also provided a pantry of items for the folks to take with them. We were
joined by a local pastor and some of his church for part of the day. They were able
to help with breakfast and prep for lunch. There once again was a discrepancy in
our plate count, but conservatively I can say we served 500 and possibly as many as
600 for lunch, the line seemed like it was never going to end!
There were a couple of other groups also serving food Saturday in the park. One
group verbally attacked me while I was filming the folks in line. I questioned the
guy as to his relationship with the Lord and his reply was that he was satan! This
guy was big and mean and was ready to jump on me, but the Lord protected us and
nothing came of his ranting!
Lunch was done and we headed back to the Bowery. We needed to take everything
out of Mercy One and clean it from top to bottom. We finished around 5 PM,
another long day, but it wasn’t over yet for me and MJ, we still needed to take the
truck and trailer out of the city to Staten Island where it would be parked for a
couple of days.
We headed out following typed directions from the Bowery; somehow we missed a
turn and ended up in Bushwick on a dead end street. We decided to try the GPS.
This took us to the Staten Island Ferry which hasn’t taken vehicles since 9-11!
Frustrated with driving all over NYC for over 1 ½ hours, we decided to GPS our
way back to the Bowery. It seemed as if our GPS had decided to take us down
every one way street the wrong way and through barricades that only people
walking could squeeze through! Finally I started recognizing areas I was familiar
with and we made it back to the Bowery, 2 hours after we had left and no further
on our journey!
The Bowery graciously offered to lead us in a van over and then bring us back. I
suggested that Mary Jo stay at the mission as she had enough excitement for one
day and there was plenty for her to do to get us ready to leave the next morning. I
grabbed Nigel to ride with me and Wendell took Ezra with him and we headed out
to Staten Island. We thought things would be OK from here, but found ourselves
headed over a bridge that we couldn’t take the trailer on so we had to quickly exit.
We were following directions to another route when we came across an underpass
that was too low for our trailer to travel under. Finally we were on our way again.
We were on a motorway of some sorts, traveling fast and it was dark when all of
the sudden I noticed that I had no trailer lights or brakes! We made it to the
median where we figured out our problem and once again we were on the road.
Finally we made it to our destination where Tom and his wife Jill allowed us to have
some snacks and drinks. We were able to talk a little about what we had done and
also about another opportunity to serve at the Bowery!
We headed back to the Bowery where we pulled in after 10:30, over 5 ½ hours after
we had originally headed out! But here are the God parts-if we had followed the
directions that we had originally been given, not making a wrong turn, we’d of lost
the top of the trailer over the Brooklyn Bridge! When we had arrived in NYC, I
had changed our GPS settings to walking instead of driving to help us find Paul and
Mandy. I had forgotten that I had done this, so when we were trying to GPS to
Staten Island we kept getting bad information, it was trying to take us there by
foot. If we had the correct settings for driving instead of walking, again, we’d of
lost the top of the trailer! The only way for us to get safely to our destination was
to get help from the Bowery and God frustrated all of our plans until only His was
left!!
We had an awesome time serving alongside of the Bowery, what a great group of
guys! The certainly have servants hearts! There was plenty of work to do and
plenty of volunteers to help out! When we do trips such as this one, we go as
support to the local church/mission. We understand that our time is limited in the
area and that the local body is the remnant that God has ordained for His purposes
in the area. While we are working away serving, there are many people who pass
through our midst that our hearts go out to. It can be very frustrating as we wish
to share Jesus with them. God showed me that those in line for food were not who
we were ministering to as much as those who we were serving alongside! We were
able to form relationships and be Godly examples in our service, in our marriages,
in our friendships, etc. Those at the Bowery who we left behind, they are the ones
that God will use to reach out to their neighborhoods. We certainly had many
opportunities to share Jesus love with those we served alongside and pray that they
were encouraged and will continue to fight the good fight for what the Lord has
called them to do! Remember this mission and those involved in your prayers,
they are on the front lines day by day, minute by minute!
To read some of our newsletters while in the field click here and scroll to the NYC
Spring Feeding Bowery/Mercy Chefs Outreach Newsletters.
Lord to go to NYC for 6 months in 2007 to help feed the homeless. Shortly
thereafter Mandy was diagnosed with cancer. They changed their plans and Mandy
immediately began her cancer treatments. Many of us gathered around her and
Paul and prayed intensely for her healing, their comfort and God's will to be done.
Shortly after our NC training camp, we received a call for prayer, the doctors had
found a mass in her body and she was scheduled for additional tests. We prayed
and the results came back, the mass was scar tissue, her cancer was completely
gone, she was 100% healed in what the doctors have said was not possible, it had to
be a miracle from God! She still needed to complete some treatments. They
decided to continue with God's call to go to NYC in January of 08 and when the
time came they did just that!
Through a series of events, they were led to The Bowery Mission, one of the oldest,
largest and most respected mission and recovery ministries in the city. Paul and
Mandy have a business back in Sarasota so they would travel home every week or
so keep track of things.
Gary and I had been talking about what could we do with Mercy One when it wasn't
being deployed to a disaster. This raised a tough question because you never know
when you'll be needed for disaster relief. We determined that the end of spring,
beginning of summer, end of fall, beginning of winter, would be a good time to do
something a little different that we could commit too in advance. Now we just had
to figure out what it was we could do that would be a good fit for the mission of
Mercy Chefs.
We had our first Spring Training Camp of 08 with a weekend between the two
events, a weekend that the Yoders were home. Church had allowed me to have the
pulpit for a few minutes to show a video from the first camp and let the
congregation know what we were doing and how they could join us. Part of the
video had a picture of Gary and his Mercy Chefs trailer.
As Paul and Mandy watched the video they thought, wouldn't it be a good thing to
get Mercy Chefs involved with The Bowery and take the ministry on the road?
They were already planning a huge event in May and this might allow them to
make it even bigger! Pastor Carl started teaching and since I had already attended
the first service, I was busy doing other things in the church.
After the service ended I was walking in the hall and saw Paul and Mandy I
thought I heard God say, talk to Paul about taking Mercy Chefs to NYC to help the
Bowery. As soon as Paul saw me he remembered the video and his thoughts and
started heading over to talk to me! After our brief conversation, I contacted Gary
and the wheels started moving, we were heading to NYC!
We quickly got extra volunteers to come up from Sarasota to help and before we
knew it, MJ and I were on a plane to Virginia Beach to pick up Mercy One!
Getting a 32' 5th wheel into NYC was no picnic, but we made it. We got in just in
time for a late dinner and then went to bed.
Tuesday-we arrived at the mission and immediately started prepping for
Wednesday’s outreach. The girls were able to serve food on the line for lunch that
day. Later in the day, we left Ray at the mission prepping and Paul, Mandy, MJ
and I took off to help with a soup kitchen at Thompkins Square Park, about a 15
minute ride from the mission. It was cold and raining and we were able to give the
people some hot soup and also provided some loaves of bread for them to take with
them. We served a little over 75 people.
Wednesday-we served lunch and dinner at the Bowery Mission-one of the oldest,
biggest and most respected missions in NYC, they were established in 1876!
Unfortunately we didn’t count plates that day. A conservative count was that we
served over 500 meals! This was a long day as we left around 7:30 and didn’t get
back to the Yoder’s until after 9:30. We also had to deal with rain and cold
weather, at least for us Floridians! Our lunch menu was Wild Alaskan Salmon a la
Paul or baked chicken served with rice smothered in homemade gravy, green
beans almondine and salad. Drinks were also provided. For dinner we served pizza
and hamburgers dressed all the way with potatoes O’White, rice and some
scrumptious desserts!
Thursday-we took Mercy One on the road; we went to Brooklyn to Maria
Hernandez Park. I wasn’t looking forward to pulling the 32’ Mercy One trailer
around the city but the Lord worked everything out beautifully and we had no
problems whatsoever. We had anticipated having 150 for lunch, this doubled and
we ended up serving a little over 300! Everything went like clock work. We served
chicken stew over rice with drinks. The Bowery also provided a pantry of items to
give to the people to take with them.
Friday-we again took the show on the road and went to Chelsea Park in
Manhattan. We served some awesome beef stew over rice accompanied by a tossed
salad with dressing and a fresh fruit salad. We were joined by two different groups
of people, one was a local group that helps out every Friday at this park, usually
they just do a soup kitchen, and the other was a group of people from Louisiana
who were working with Mission New York and were on loan to us. The local group
brought drinks and some awesome fresh bread and also provided a ministry table
to talk to those who were getting food. Once again the Bowery also provided a
pantry of items for the people to take home with them. Again we were told there’d
be around 150 and we ended up serving a little over 300!
This however was not the end of our day. We had started out at 6 to get things
ready. Once back at the mission, we had to prep for Saturday’s grand finale! Jim,
Kelly, MJ and I started preparing the next day’s food. We had anticipated a staffed
kitchen on our return, but came back to an empty kitchen! After an hour or so
the crew was growing weary at the unending work that was in front of us. Was a
mutiny in store??!! Finally we were able to get a couple of the Bowery guys to lend
us a hand, but it still looked as if we'd never get the task completed without
working through the night! A few minutes later 10-12 local middle school girls
showed up unannounced and eager to help! Once again God had a plan; all we had
to do was to be faithful in what He had called us to do while He took care to provide
all that we needed! A couple of hours later, everything was complete, the kitchen
was clean and at 8 PM we were walking out to get dinner.
We headed out worn out and dirty to find some of NYC’s famous pizza! Since we
were all wearing our Mercy Chefs shirts and hats, several people asked us what
they meant and we were able to share the ministry and what God was doing
through us in NYC!
Saturday-The “Grand Finale”!!-we had a lot of work to do; we needed to be at
Thompkins Square Park between 7 and 7:30 as we had promised to serve
breakfast. Jim and Kelly were troopers and met us at 5:30 AM to start loading all
of the food that we had prepared the night before into Mercy One. At 6 the Bowery
Boys started showing up. It turns out that weekends and holidays are pretty much
off times for most of these guys. We were told on Friday that we'd need to provide
most of the help ourselves needed for the outreach on Saturday. I quickly did the
math and decided that we’d be short several people. I immediately started asking
many of the guys who had helped us throughout the week. Every person that we
asked to help gladly accepted the call, even after I told them how early they’d be
needed. One of the guys was fairly new to the program and had been asking to go
on an outreach for weeks and you should’ve seen the smile on his face when I
asked him as he eagerly said yes!
We quickly got everything loaded up and headed out. When we arrived there was
already a line waiting for us! We served eggs a la Chef Paul along with fresh and
hot cinnamon rolls; we decided to leave the frosting off since it would make a big
mess! We served a little over 200 for breakfast.
We immediately got things cleaned up and started cooking lunch. There was
already a line for lunch before we finished serving breakfast. Word had spread as
to what all we were doing and everyone wanted to have some of the food that God
was providing!
We were serving wild Alaskan salmon a la Paul II or chicken again, this time with
potatoes au Jim, he asked how do I season this stuff, my reply was add a lot of salt,
pepper and garlic to the vegetables that we had already chopped to add the night
before. He asked, how do I know when I’ve got enough garlic, I replied that when
he could strongly smell the garlic, add a little more and he was finished! He did an
awesome job! We also served green beans almondine, fresh salad with homemade
dressing, and Mandy made some cookies to hand out for dessert! Once again the
Bowery also provided a pantry of items for the folks to take with them. We were
joined by a local pastor and some of his church for part of the day. They were able
to help with breakfast and prep for lunch. There once again was a discrepancy in
our plate count, but conservatively I can say we served 500 and possibly as many as
600 for lunch, the line seemed like it was never going to end!
There were a couple of other groups also serving food Saturday in the park. One
group verbally attacked me while I was filming the folks in line. I questioned the
guy as to his relationship with the Lord and his reply was that he was satan! This
guy was big and mean and was ready to jump on me, but the Lord protected us and
nothing came of his ranting!
Lunch was done and we headed back to the Bowery. We needed to take everything
out of Mercy One and clean it from top to bottom. We finished around 5 PM,
another long day, but it wasn’t over yet for me and MJ, we still needed to take the
truck and trailer out of the city to Staten Island where it would be parked for a
couple of days.
We headed out following typed directions from the Bowery; somehow we missed a
turn and ended up in Bushwick on a dead end street. We decided to try the GPS.
This took us to the Staten Island Ferry which hasn’t taken vehicles since 9-11!
Frustrated with driving all over NYC for over 1 ½ hours, we decided to GPS our
way back to the Bowery. It seemed as if our GPS had decided to take us down
every one way street the wrong way and through barricades that only people
walking could squeeze through! Finally I started recognizing areas I was familiar
with and we made it back to the Bowery, 2 hours after we had left and no further
on our journey!
The Bowery graciously offered to lead us in a van over and then bring us back. I
suggested that Mary Jo stay at the mission as she had enough excitement for one
day and there was plenty for her to do to get us ready to leave the next morning. I
grabbed Nigel to ride with me and Wendell took Ezra with him and we headed out
to Staten Island. We thought things would be OK from here, but found ourselves
headed over a bridge that we couldn’t take the trailer on so we had to quickly exit.
We were following directions to another route when we came across an underpass
that was too low for our trailer to travel under. Finally we were on our way again.
We were on a motorway of some sorts, traveling fast and it was dark when all of
the sudden I noticed that I had no trailer lights or brakes! We made it to the
median where we figured out our problem and once again we were on the road.
Finally we made it to our destination where Tom and his wife Jill allowed us to have
some snacks and drinks. We were able to talk a little about what we had done and
also about another opportunity to serve at the Bowery!
We headed back to the Bowery where we pulled in after 10:30, over 5 ½ hours after
we had originally headed out! But here are the God parts-if we had followed the
directions that we had originally been given, not making a wrong turn, we’d of lost
the top of the trailer over the Brooklyn Bridge! When we had arrived in NYC, I
had changed our GPS settings to walking instead of driving to help us find Paul and
Mandy. I had forgotten that I had done this, so when we were trying to GPS to
Staten Island we kept getting bad information, it was trying to take us there by
foot. If we had the correct settings for driving instead of walking, again, we’d of
lost the top of the trailer! The only way for us to get safely to our destination was
to get help from the Bowery and God frustrated all of our plans until only His was
left!!
We had an awesome time serving alongside of the Bowery, what a great group of
guys! The certainly have servants hearts! There was plenty of work to do and
plenty of volunteers to help out! When we do trips such as this one, we go as
support to the local church/mission. We understand that our time is limited in the
area and that the local body is the remnant that God has ordained for His purposes
in the area. While we are working away serving, there are many people who pass
through our midst that our hearts go out to. It can be very frustrating as we wish
to share Jesus with them. God showed me that those in line for food were not who
we were ministering to as much as those who we were serving alongside! We were
able to form relationships and be Godly examples in our service, in our marriages,
in our friendships, etc. Those at the Bowery who we left behind, they are the ones
that God will use to reach out to their neighborhoods. We certainly had many
opportunities to share Jesus love with those we served alongside and pray that they
were encouraged and will continue to fight the good fight for what the Lord has
called them to do! Remember this mission and those involved in your prayers,
they are on the front lines day by day, minute by minute!
To read some of our newsletters while in the field click here and scroll to the NYC
Spring Feeding Bowery/Mercy Chefs Outreach Newsletters.
and if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then your light will rise in the
darkness, and your night will become like the noonday. Isaiah 58:10
darkness, and your night will become like the noonday. Isaiah 58:10
