I have reflected over the past 24 hours about this amazing man of God I know.
Saturday morning of our first weekend of service food drive is when I first met him. He joined us on our transportation team to get the food collected from the zones back to where we are sorting. He was so impacted that day from the amount of food collected he decided to join us Sunday to repeat the transpiration of the food. He let us borrow his cargo van and enclosed trailer as well and someone else drove it around to collect food. When sunday was over he handed me the keys to the cargo van and trailer and said it now belongs to Grace. That's the first time that has happened to me, and it was the first time I met this amazing man.
He signed up the next year and showed up with a dump truck to collect the food we gathered. I will never forget the look of proudness on his face as he pulled up. It was completely filled with collected food. He always impacted those he interacted with.
There was something about helping others and food that stirred inside this man. One day I got invited to come visit his office and try out this new idea he had. Tim and I went out to the office and had some of the best BBQ ever. He had traveled to this expert BBQ man in St Louis and spent the day with him learning as much as he could. Now he was back and had some of the homework with him for us to try. He talked about creating a ministry at Grace that would feed people. It was a huge plan and I wasn't sure where it would land, but boy that was great BBQ!! Little did I know that this man was dedicated. When he set his mind to help people, that's exactly what he did. Add to it that he could share the love of Jesus with them, watch out he was on a mission.
Helping others through food was what Doug lived for. When he sent me emails about the design of the trailer that was being built, all I could think was wow. This was an amazing cooking vessel, but the pictures didn't do it justice. When he showed up that day to show us his new ministry tool, I think every man was drooling.
He has served many ministries, our leaders and volunteers. He has served the homeless many times. He also served the staff lunch during our service day. Not only did he serve us lunch, after lunch he joined us by pushing a wheelbarrow. He was always there to help, to do whatever needed to be done. He didn't want the credit, he always gave it to the Lord.
I shouldn't have been surprised when he came to me and said he wanted to feed our Care Center friends. Not just give them food, but amazing food-the same amazing meal he was making for the men's ministry. I was blown away! His goal was to feed 500 of our friends this week, he wanted to give them a taste of amazing food. He wanted them to feel normal, to feel special, to feel Jesus this week.
We just got done talking about the way the food would be transported over to us. I just got done reminding him how amazing our friends were going to feel and that I couldn't wait for this to start.
Then 10 min later, he was gone.
We will never know why, our questions will not be answered.
What I can hold on to is the life he lived,
the amazing person he is,
the wonderful father he is,
the caring husband he is,
the servant leader he is,
the humble man he is,
the Godly example he is!
Doug would want us to be better people, to be better father/mothers, to be better spouses, to be better volunteers, to love people more, to care for them no matter what it cost us, to be the hands and feet of Jesus to EVERYONE we interact with.
He loved the staff, he loved Grace, he loved our volunteers, he loved everyone and more importantly he loved Jesus!
