Health Fair

Every Spring we have a Health Fair at Baptist Friendship House. This is a time we provide basic health care services for the community. Alabama WMU Nursing Fellowship, along with LSU Nursing students and LSU Nurses Christian Fellowship, helped us by providing various services: vision, hearing, glucose, BMI, blood pressure, HIV & TB information, dental, hygiene, nutrition and childcare information. We also had volunteers that provided hair cuts and foot care.


Several people attended the heath fair and received services they don't normally receive. One man was thrilled to have been given glasses. He put them on and exclaimed, "I can see!" He was so proud and made sure to show everyone the glasses.


A few ladies washed and cared for the feet of the participants. Many of them had blisters and sores and the women wrapped the feet up with bandages. They were given new socks and shoes.


One lady volunteered to cut the participants hair. One older man walked in with long shabby hair and beard. The volunteer shaved his beard and cut his hair. He walked out beaming. All those that had their hair cut left smiling and expressed their gratitude for this service.

Can you imagine the luxuries and the things we take for granted--such as shoes that fit, having a hair cut, a shaved beard, and clean socks changing the outlook of one's life? The simple fact that these volunteers were being Jesus to those that came their way. What example to follow!!

A Life Changed

(Photo from WMU: L to R, Janie Wise, LBC; Melanie Fleming, BFH; Karina America, BFH; Jean Cullen, National WMU)

This year one of our women at Baptist Friendship House received the Sybil Bentley Dove Award from WMU!

Read the stories here:

WMU Press Release

MyMISSIONfulfilled

We are so proud of her and are blessed to have currently on staff. God has brought her a long way, and she is always willing to give him the credit for her successes. Please continue to pray for her and her family.

GE Employees Volunteer at BFH

We had a group from GE spend a service day working at Baptist Friendship House. They did repairs, organized items, put together hygiene items for our our health fair, painted walls and doors and other jobs around the center.

Samaritan's Purse

We have been blessed to have Samaritan's Purse (http://www.samaritanspurse.org/) provide volunteers that have done a lot of work at Baptist Friendship House. Their volunteers cleaned out our yard, removed trees off the fence that was damaged from Katrina and put up a new fence. It looks so great!

This week they are building an apartment upstairs for future missionaries. We are praying for a Mission Service Corps couple that feels led to come and minister with us at Baptist Friendship House. If you feel led to serve at Baptist Friendship House, or know someone that may, please contact Kay at kbennettbfh@aol.com.

Snow!

It's Snowing in New Orleans!

This morning, the unthinkable happened...it snowed in New Orleans! We were amazed to see the amount of snow falling (and sticking) here in the city! So funny because yesterday morning we were wearing t-shirts and talking about how warm and humid it was...and today, everything changed!

The videos show our backyard and the front of the building.(Stay updated today on our next video. I'm uploading it...and takes awhile.) You can see how hard it was snowing. The kids in New Orleans didn't get to miss school today but some of them probably experienced their first snow!

Over 19,000 Pounds of Food Given Away!

Feed the Children dropped off 800 boxes of food (that feeds a family of 4 for 10 days)--that is 20 pallets and 19,000 pounds of food! We stored it at Operation NOAH's storage site (Lakeforest Baptist Church in New Orleans) last week. We were grateful to have Ron help us unload each palette and load in the warehouse with their equipment.


** Then yesterday David from Operation NOAH brought a truck loaded with the 800 boxes and we unloaded each box individually at Baptist Friendship House. Whew! We worked fast and got each box off the truck ready to give out.

We had donated treats from Whole Foods (pies, cakes, bread, rolls, etc.) that we bagged up and gave to people when they picked up their boxes of food.



We gave out all 800 boxes in 3 hours! Each box can feed a family of four for 10 days, so at the end of the day, thousands of people we given food in New Orleans. There are a lot of hungry families in our city.

The national statistics say that 1 out of every 5 children go to bed hungry in the United States and in Louisiana [Pre-Katrina] 1 out of 3 children go to bed hungry. That number has risen since the Storm and we are doing all we can to feed the hungry families in our city.

*Please pray that there will be more opportunities for food ministries in New Orleans. It takes a lot of resources in order to feed hungry people, so please pray for the financial assistance in order to continue this ministry.


We want to continue this ministry on a monthly basis.... and not stop there! When we gave out the food yesterday we gathered information about each family so we can further minister to them. At Baptist Friendship House, we seek to minister like Jesus did--to the whole person--physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually...which is the greatest need of all!

"Meeting Needs Through Love, Action & Truth"