EVERYONE WANTS TO HELP Part 2. Received a note today from the Administrative Assistant at The Baptist Courier, the publication of the South Carolina Baptist Convention. At the encouragement of CPT Patti's mother-in-law, she sent me this link. Thanks Mom...and thanks to those at the Courier.

South Carolina Baptists are sending nearly 2,800 food boxes to war-torn Iraqi families as a part of a larger International Mission Board effort that is expected to collect as many as 95,000 boxes from Southern Baptist churches across the country.

The food boxes, each containing enough food to feed an Iraqi family of five for about a month, were collected at three sites in South Carolina: First Church, North Spartanburg; the South Carolina Baptist Convention building in Columbia; and the Charleston Association offices...

...When Mike Hamlet, pastor of First Church and Phillips, associate pastor, realized that the complicated guidelines for packing the boxes might discourage participation, they asked their congregation to buy 22 tons of the specified food items from local grocers to set up a warehouse in its fellowship hall.

Church members and community residents then paid $60 and took shopping carts down the aisles. At each stop, a sign indicated how much of a particular item was needed. They took their filled carts to an assembly area, where volunteers helped them pack boxes correctly, before loading them on a truck...

...In addition to nearly 70 pounds of staple food items, each box has a note that includes John 1:17 in Aramaic.

“Every time an Iraqi family opens a box, they will see a label that says it is a gift of love from Southern Baptist churches in America,” Phillips noted. “That’s a witness for Christ.”

John 1:17 reads: For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.