I am exhausted. My toe bones ache. So do my eyelashes. 🤷‍♀️

It’s 7:30pm. I’m lying in bed. I have no business writing a blog when the tips of my fingers hurt and my eyes are tired. But I can’t help it. I gotta share with the world what I saw today.

Today was the 2nd Saturday of our church’s, Antioch Baptist- Lancaster SC, annual Great Pumpkin Patch. Like so many other things, COVID stole it from us last year. We are making up for it this year. Ten.Fold.

Charlie Brown and I arrived early around 7:45 this morning to prepare the Fishes & Loaves Bible Tent that we oversee. Immediately, I just started snapping pictures of my brothers and sisters in Christ. It was like a perfectly synchronized army of ants. Nobody’s job was more important than the next. They all worked in perfect harmony to get the jobs done. This week’s rain threw some monkey wrenches in the mix, but you would have never know .

As the day progressed, I continued to just people watch. I often call my ability to lip read a curse, but today it was a blessing. It was as if we (society) took a step back in time and truly enjoyed life and each other for several hours. We had 2 trains that ran non-stop around and around the track for 8 hours. There was a hayride that ran non-stop. Games ever hour on the hour. Inflatables. Face painting, pumpkin golf, ace throwing, food, food, and more food. Oh…. Not to mention the pumpkins themselves!

The smiles on the kids faces were priceless. The laughter and good natured competitiveness of the teenagers was contagious. Older couples walked around hand in hand. I honestly don’t think I saw one single child cry today. Just pure happiness. For 8 hours, we forgot about all the terrible things in the world and enjoyed the blessings of God.

Our tent stayed steadily busy. Like every other tent or job in the patch, we all had one goal…..

Love God. Love Others. Serve Both.

In the last 2 Saturdays, we have given out a whopping 533 Bibles/Bible story books. Five hundred and thirty three. 5.3.3.. I’m still blown away every time that number rolls through my head. Two years ago, we gave away just a little over that for the ENTIRE month. We still have 3 Saturdays to go this year!!

People are hungry like never before. Hungry for some sense of normalcy. Hungry for love. Hungry for God’s word. So many times I heard the same answer back when I asked people if they had a home church…. No. Some were from out of town/state and found out about the Pumpkin Patch through our affiliation with drug rehabilitation ministries and what our Church is trying to do in our front yard. Another lady stopped at our tent and said she was so impressed with how friendly everyone was. She explained that she worked in a local group home for adults with disabilities. She wasn’t working today, but she placed a call to the home and had the caregivers bring them out. My Charlie Brown got to meet the real a real man named Charlie Brown. 🤣

We may live in a broken world, but even if just for today, the Antioch Army gave hope away like it was going out of style! We were honored to love on our community and serve God and our neighbors both.

I pray that any that we talked to today will take us up on our offers of sitting with us tomorrow in the pews. From our tent, if you received an outreach Bible and wish to trade it for a leather bound/leather like Bible, come find us on left center section, pew 3.

God is good. We just gotta love Him. Love others. And serve Both!

For me personally, I LOVED being an ant today. Enjoy the pictures.

Until next time,

The BeanCounter

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