A Peek Behind The LOLI Curtain – Part 2

While most readers of this blog and most LOLI team members are familiar with the activities and stories that go along with a crusade, many are not familiar with all the preparation that goes into a crusade. This series of posts is designed to give you an insight into some of that preparation.

 

If you read Part 1, then you are familiar with the contents of the food bags we distribute during the crusade. During Panama Ora, we will distribute over 5,000 bags of food. That’s a lot of bags, and it’s even more when you think of the amount of each individual item that we need. In total, this is what we need to distribute 5,000 bags of food.

– 5,000 pounds of corn – 5,000 pounds of beans
– 5,000 bags of rice
– 5,000 bags of sugar
– 5,000 bags of salt
– 5,000 bottles of oil

That’s a lot of product, and the quantities we need for each product prevents us from just buying them at the local grocery store. In fact, they are all special ordered specifically for the crusade.

One of the principles of LOLI is for us to be a blessing to the country to which The Lord leads us. This obviously includes the distribution of food and stuffed animals to the poor and the preaching of the Gospel of Jesus Christ to as many as possible. But there are other tangible ways in which we are intentional in being a blessing to a country. One of those ways is how we obtain the food we need for distribution.

Every item we need is purchased locally. We do not ship in any of the food items that we distribute. In this way, we are able to not only bless the people, but we are also able to bless the local economy of the areas we go to during a crusade. Once the food has been purchased, it is delivered to each distribution site in bulk.

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Once the food is distributed to each site, we then have to prepare and organize it for bagging.

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In the last part of this series, I will describe the process we use to turn these individual products into the food bags the teams distribute during the crusade.