Intersection

Posted by Wayne Thomas on

So, LeAnn and I were out with the kids the other night to grab some dinner, when we passed a young woman who was standing at an intersection panhandling with a hand-written sign. We noticed she had a little boy with her, but we drove on through being mindful that our kids were hungry. We got about a block past the spot where we saw her, looked at each other, and flipped a U turn to go back and see how we could help.

We pulled into the gas station adjacent to where she was standing. I went inside to grab some cash from the ATM, and LeAnn headed over to introduce herself and get some information from her. We found out that she had just left an abusive relationship, that she had three young children, and that she needed over $400 for a deposit on the apartment she had just moved into with her kids. Apparently, the landlord had allowed her to move in but gave a deadline for the deposit to be paid. The deadline was in three days.

She needed help fast.

So we gave her some cash to buy her family dinner with, got her contact information, and went into emergency assistance mode. LeAnn had the great idea to put out an alert on the Project318 Facebook page, and I followed suit on my Facebook page. We made plans to drive out to Daybreak Baptist Church, where we have a Food Pantry for assisting people in crisis. We wanted to gather some groceries together to take over to them.

And off we went.

Within an hour a couple called us and promised to donate the remainder of the woman’s deposit.  And shortly after that, they met us at the church, where we were gathering supplies, and handed us an envelope with $500 cash in it. Just like that, God provided for this young mother and her children… just like that.

I was humbled by the Lord’s grace.

We called her to tell her what had happened, and that we wanted to bring her the money and the groceries, and two new bibles that we had for her. She was so overwhelmed that she could barely speak at first. And then joy and hope erupted from her end of the telephone, as the reality of her rescue sank in and took hold of her. LeAnn and I were overwhelmed, ourselves, as we had just been witness to the physical intervention of the Holy Spirit in the life of this woman and her babies. A short time later, I delivered the money and the groceries to their home, and received more blessing in the process than I believe she even did.

It was moving. It was life-changing. It was eye-opening.

The Lord truly wants us to love others, as we love ourselves. And when we even make a shift in that direction, He takes over and moves in mighty ways. All glory and honor be to Him, forever and ever.

*If you would like to help or volunteer at Project318, please comment below or call 661-932-2223. We are following up with this young family and continue to show our love and support for them. And we also have opportunities coming up at Thanksgiving and Christmas for you to partner with us to share the love of Jesus with the people of Bakersfield.

“Dear children, let us not love with words or speech, but with actions and in truth.” 1 John 3:18

Thanksgiving Dinner Gift Baskets

Posted by Wayne Thomas on

I have great news! We have scheduled our first service project. We will be giving 50 families in Bakersfield Thanksgiving Dinner Baskets this year! The baskets will include enough food for a 6 person family. The contents will include:

  • 1 Turkey
  • 3 vegetables
  • Stuffing
  • 1 box of Rice
  • 1 potato product
  • 1 pumpkin pie
  • 1 box of muffin or cake mix
  • Cranberry sauce
  • 1 pound bag of Salad greens
  • 1 pack of dinner rolls
  • 1 pk aluminum foil
  • 1 turkey pan
  • 1 laundry basket

Yes! We are really excited to start to step out of the administrative start-up side of this project and finally begin to go out and love our community! If you feel led to contribute your time or resources to this cause, please call me at 661-932-2223. 

Thank you all for praying for us! Keep it up! 

The Board

Posted by Wayne Thomas on

It’s an amazing thing to sit back and watch God put this thing together.

So, this week we had our first Development Team meeting. The purpose for the Development Team is to help me put some meat on the vision that God gave me, and to help put the whole thing into motion. We met on Monday night, and I have to tell you… it was such a God moment! The first thing I noticed was that the chemistry in the group was electric. There was an immediate unity and affirmation of the vision for the project. We were all on the same page. Long story, short; we walked into the room as a Development Team. We walked out of the room as the new Board of Directors for Project318!

Here are the members of our Board of Directors:

Wayne Thomas | Judy Camp | Robin Harkleroad

John Fowler | DiAnne Schwartz | Willie Fields | Lynn Embry

Our officers are:

Wayne Thomas – Founder/CEO

Judy Camp – Corporate Secretary

Robin Harkleroad – Treasurer

I also had a teleconference with an attorney on Friday. He was able to take all of the unknown things regarding our non-profit journey and clear the fog for me. The cost is significant, but it’s not anywhere near as high as I had feared it might be. It was a very enlightening and informative conversation.

Project318 is chugging right along! But it’s evident that it isn’t by the power of our doing. The Lord is clearly paving the way for us.

The Sack

Posted by Wayne Thomas on

So, I did something really fun yesterday. I received Project318′s first donations; a used tiller, and a sack full of money.

Yes, I said “a sack full of money”.

I was really excited about the tiller. We will use that on our first garden when we plant it at Daybreak Baptist Church. But when I was handed a sack full of $1 bills, I was pretty blown away. I didn’t have any idea how to gauge how much might be in there, but I thought it would be $300 or $400, easily. I thanked the sweet lady who gave me this, and headed over to the bank to sit in the air conditioning of my truck and count it.

So I began counting. The bills were mostly all folded in half. Most of the folds had two or three bills folded together; some six or eight. When I got to the $200 mark and noticed that I had barely made a dent in the contents of the sack, I began to feel a “loaves and fishes-kind-of-thing” happening.

I thanked God, and kept counting.

When I finished, almost an hour had passed. I had burned 1/8 of a tank of gas, not expecting it to take so long, and I sat there with $1,259.00 in 25 stacks of $1 bills all over the front seat of my truck! I was dumbfounded! It didn’t look like that much money, at first glance. And then I got nervous because I had stacks of cash all over my front seat! So I carried this sack full of money into the bank, shared this amazing story and a quick laugh about the sack with the bank representative, and opened Project318′s account with its first donation.

I feel very thankful, and affirmed by the Lord in what we’re doing. I’ll never forget this first donation. I’ll look back and remember it fondly for many years.

Thank You, Lord.

Our Journey Begins

Posted by Wayne Thomas on

Two weeks ago, God laid out a plan to me in a very detailed vision: Project318. The number 318 comes from the bible in 1 John 3:18, and it says, “Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth.”(NIV) And so that is what Project318 will do. We will love the less fortunate with actions and in truth.

In the short-term, Project318 is going to form teams to take to the streets of Bakersfield, Arvin, Wasco, Shafter, Taft, and Tehachapi to meet the impoverished people of our community with the love of Christ. These teams will come with care packages that will include food, hygiene products, first aid supplies, bibles and toys. At the same time, we will be documenting the names and whereabouts of the individuals we encounter, to improve our ability to successfully return to them and continue caring for the same people in weekly follow-up visits.

In the long-term, Project 318 morphs into a small city. With cooperation from the Body of Christ at-large in the Central Valley, gardens will start popping up in many locations to provide fresh, nutritional fruits and vegetables to a very malnourished, homeless and poverty-stricken demographic. Corporate sponsors and others will donate grant money and the necessary food products to round out and meet the nutritional needs of these precious people. Project 318 will be on a large property, with crops and motel-styled housing for families and individuals who are fighting to get out of homelessness. There will be a free childcare center so that parents can go to work and start to climb out of their horrible circumstances without worrying about the well-being of their little ones. There will be a career center, a health clinic, a thrift store, a laundry service center, a worship center and an outdoor amphitheater. We are praying for benefit concerts to take place to help fund the project, and we’re praying even now for ministries such as Jesus Shack, Flood ministries, and the Golden Empire Gleaners to partner up with us to promote these concerts. There will be weekly church services in the Worship Center, with pastors from all over the Central Valley and beyond coming in to share God’s word with a spiritually hungry crowd. Our prayer is that this will be a place where God can meet their physical and spiritual needs. There will be large box trucks for pick ups and deliveries from P318 crop locations, church hand gardens and farms all over the area to supply the P318 campus and support the other ministries who have already been in the trenches battling homelessness in our city. We know that we will not be reinventing the wheel, we simply want to jump into the battle with both feet. There are 21 organizations in Kern County who are currently fighting chronic homelessness before we step foot on the streets. And we praise and thank God for their efforts in our community!

And so now we are starting our journey. And it is already an adventure! I will blog the entire process here. I hope you follow our progress and see the Lord’s hand in such a way that He, and He alone receives all of the glory. Amen!

Last night, we took our first physical steps down this road when we went out to our church, Daybreak Baptist, to meet our great friends, Lynn and Kathy Embry. Lynn is an avid gardener, and wanted to meet with us to offer any help we might need! This couple is such an example to our church, and they both have radically passionate hearts for the lost. They sacrifice their time and their resources on a daily basis in service to our Lord Jesus. And I thank God for their servants’ hearts, and their desire to help us! So we met to talk about possible locations on the church property to grow a garden. And after we discussed those possibilities, they took us over to see Lynn’s personal garden, which was amazing! He is growing a couple of varieties of squash, okra, tomatoes, cantaloupes, watermelons, and zucchini. According to Lynn, his garden is 30ft by 60ft and could yield enough produce to feed 10 families each week through the summer months! That is encouraging! 30ft by 60ft isn’t very large for that kind of harvest. And we are discussing the possibility of our first church garden being considerably larger than that; maybe 4 to 6 times that size! So our visit with them was very encouraging, and we left there with a little more clarity and focus on what the growing/gardening side of Project318 will require.

In the picture above, our 6-year-old, Hannah Grace fell in love with the garden! She loved picking vegetables and browsing in and around the greenery to see all of the little goodies that the plants were freely offering her. We had a hard time getting her back in the truck when we were finished. Seems that we discovered a new passion in our little girl, and we talked on the way home of how cute she will be in a pair of overalls.

That’s all for this entry. Please keep us in your prayers, and thank you for taking the time to read the blog.

May the Lord bless you and keep you…

Wayne