Wearing bonnets and bandannas, they came to serve

LAKE CHARLES, La. (AP) - On Thursday, Oct. 22, in the parking lot of St. John Bosco Catholic Church in Westlake, Amish volunteers from Christian Aid Ministries were retracting and securing food truck canopies and preparing to head back home to Pennsylvania where transportation is strictly horse and buggy.

Since their arrival on Aug. 31 after Hurricane Laura, they had served 27,435 meals: meat, potatoes, vegetable and dessert cups of generally tapioca or Jello and fruit.

Women were dressed in crisp, clean white bonnets and modest dresses with sleeves to the elbow, hems below the knee and necklines comfortably around the neck.

Over the bridge and about six miles away in the Moss Bluff Pentecostal Church parking lot, 30 volunteers and bandanna-wearing Pastors Billy Morgan from Crosspointe Biker Church in Connersville, Indiana and Chris Lovett from Freedom Biker Church in Duncan, Oklahoma, were busy preparing food. They left their Harleys at home and drove tractor-trailers here packed with food. They had come after Hurricane Laura and came back to help again after Hurricane Delta.

Volunteers were busy making nachos, opening cheese packets and grilling “a couple thousand pounds of ground beef,” Lovett estimated.

The place was humming with seven generators and six freezers and guys moving meat around on hot grills.

The American Press asked the biker church pastors and the spokesperson for Christian Aid Ministries, Luke Miller, the same questions: Why did you come, and why did you come here? Though the mode of dress was different for each group, answers were almost identical.

Miller said, “God put us here, and because we know that in the heart of every person there is a need that only Jesus can fill.”

Morgan answered, “You needed us and God sent us.”

Both groups were ready to respond, keeping an eye on where the hurricane hit and making connections immediately.

An Indiana church member was in Moss Bluff working on the high lines after Hurricane Laura, and met the pastor of Moss Bluff Pentecostal Church, Jared Pugh. The lineman called back home to tell Lovett he’d found a place that needed help and the place to set up to provide that help.

Miller had a similar story.

“It’s amazing how God plans out these things,” Miller said, “down to the very smallest detail.”

Volunteers are not paid for their work, transportation or other expenses.

So, why do they do it?

“I’m sure you’ve heard it’s more blessed to give than receive,” Miller said. “We don’t do it just to be a blessing, but a blessing comes when we serve.”