A “LOAVES & FISHES” story by Nancy Nethercott, TEAM Japan Missionary
I already had a full frig, freezer and pantry from a big shopping trip andgifts of food from military friends which came the day before, but then a good friend whose husband’s job was moving them back to the US showed up with a car full of goods from her pantry. So, on the morning of March 11, 2011 I was standing in front of my kitchen pantry and fridge, which was now bursting at the seams with food, saying “Lord, why do I have so much food?”
Less than three hours later the answer to this question couldn’t have been more apparent.
With the abundance of food in my cupboards and freezer and fridge, I was able to feed the team at CRASH Headquarters for most of the first week of operations, at a time when very little food and water was available in stores even in Tokyo – 200 km away from the area of impact.
Right away I wrote an email to some friends asking if they would like to take a turn at making a meal for about 15 CRASH volunteers…that number grew exponentially and for almost 3 weeks a great crew of “Kitchen Friends” fed 75 – 100 volunteers 2 meals a day. As the numbers multiplied daily, so the Lord multiplied the food we had to serve. TEAMers who lived further West shipped us food, military friends came with their cars loaded with goods, and others baked at home and brought things for meals, snacks, etc.
One day early on we were just about ready to serve lunch and had planned on about 40 people, the number we had had the day before. I looked at the three large pots of soup we had and then looked out at the gathering crowd –
surely almost 75 hungry volunteers! I gathered my kitchen crew and prayed, asking the Lord to do a miracle as only He could do. I said “Amen” and immediately a Japanese woman I had never seen before nor since walked into
the kitchen with a huge container in her hands. She said, “I made a pot of chili and was wondering if you could use it”!!! We cheered and almost cried. Truly a modern-day loaves and fishes story! I’m so thankful for the provision of the Lord and to have been in the right place at the right time.
God continues to provide. The church around the world has enabled CRASH Japan to:
— Send over 1000 volunteers since March 11th
— Have the equivalent of 100 full-time workers (paid staff + volunteers)
— Invest over $1 million (USA) to date on relief work. The effectiveness of this has been greatly multiplied by the use of donated goods and volunteer labor.