The Gift Known as Chef Wendy: A Story of Hope

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July 22, 2020

Ever since March, our lives have taken on many new challenges that have caused us to wonder how God can truly use us during this time. For Wendy, a Woodside member at the Warren campus and certified chef, life got very busy with kids’ schedules, and she was wondering how she’d get through this. A familiar feeling among most people. What is God’s purpose for this time? Or what can I even do during this time?

Amid the new busyness and uncertain futures, it occurred to Wendy that she had prepared many meals weeks before lockdown and those meals needed to get eaten. She reached out to her church and asked how those meals could be used and not wasted. Woodside reached out to St. John Hospital with Wendy’s idea, and God blessed those hardworking hospital workers with those donated meals. She would never have thought God would now use those meals she had prepared previous.

As it says in Ephesians 2:10, “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.”

God loves to use His children for His glory, even in seasons of tense and pandemics. Wendy used what God had given her to bless others around her. And God wasn’t finished. He had even bigger plans for Wendy and Woodside Bible Church.

What started as a one-time opportunity to bless hospital staff quickly turned into a weekly rhythm of feeding medical professionals, firefighters, and MCREST guests in partnership with Warren’s food pantry.

As word spread, Wendy was contacted by a parent at her child’s school, who asked whether Woodside could feed her husband’s unit of the National Guard. When the team at Woodside Warren stepped in to serve, this woman was overwhelmed with gratitude. She had called Wendy in tears with stories over how this will be such a blessing to many. Wendy asks us to continue praying for families with parents in the military who are called to the frontlines to serve.

Wendy is still amazed at the way God transformed her situation from feeling stuck at home without a purpose to shining His love to people who don’t know Him. She’s prayerful that God will continue to use these new relationships as she shares Christ with those she meets.

When I felt I did not have a new option to share the love of Christ, Christ opened a new door. What a true showing of how Christ continues to lead our paths when we start to doubt what we are doing.

Just like Wendy shares, scriptures enforces that God will work through us for His good!

For it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure.
Philippians 2:13

Regardless of our situation, strengths, or weaknesses, God has a plan to use you in His story. So, how can God use you right now?