Dear Cambridge Family,

I want to thank you for your prayers this past Sunday as our youth "skipped church and went hungry."

Here is a recap that I think will bless your week as you see how God worked in the lives of our youth.

At about 8 AM last Sunday over 40 of our youth and the youth from Ragland Memorial Church (led by their youth pastor Chris Robbins, who I often refer to as our "youth missionary) arrived at Cambridge to pack sandwiches and lunches for the homeless. In addition, the night before we had a youth worship service and earlier I had encouraged the youth to skip breakfast - both to pray and fast for our ministry and to get a small idea of what it feels like to be hungry. Our plan was to go to Monroe Park adjacent to the VCU campus and serve as the hands & feet of Christ to the homeless and indigent community that often gathered at the Park.

As we checked the weather the night before and that morning, rain was eminent, it was just a question of when. We had encouraged our youth to pray that the rain hold off, but if not that God would still be glorified.

We skipped breakfast and made over 400 sandwiches and packed lunches that included fresh fruit, chips, cookies or snack cakes, sandwiches, and muffins. We finished packing all of this up on the bus in under an hour - start to finish (A special shout out to Betty Wesson and Mr. & Mrs Harris who led and guided our youth and to our Youth Sunday School teachers Debbie & Henry Stewart and young adult leader Elliott Richardson who supervised and served with all youth during our ministry).

We left the church at 9:30 AM to make sure we included youth coming to Sunday school/church. We arrived at Monroe Park and set up and by the time we had the table set up we had several people lining up for food. We prayed over the food and started to serve. We served about 170 lunches of which about 120 or more went to homeless/folks in need. Several of them took two lunches. We also gave away about 120 soda's and 40 bottles of water (Several volunteers & participants from a nearby children's charity walk-a-thon also stopped by and asked for sandwiches. I just figured God was rewarding them for giving as well).

We concluded with a worship service in which I tied in the need for all to serve Christ by serving others (Mathew 25/James 2:14-17) and that we must do so in the name of Jesus, realizing that our works are in vain unless we have accepted and proclaimed Jesus Christ as Lord & Savior (Ephesians 2: 8-10).

We then broke our fast by eating the same food we had just prepared and served to "the least of these."

We boarded our packed bus back to Cambridge...and it began to rain.

Serving our youth in Christ - Win