A few days ago, Brittany Moore and her year-and-a-half-old toddler, Ethan, were in the backyard blowing bubbles into the Georgia summer air. As one of those rainbow-hued wet bubbles drifted upward into the sky, little Ethan ran after it. But over their backyard fence and into the woods it sailed.

Halted by the fence, Ethan stood there pointing. “Feet,” he called to his mother. “Feet.”

Feet? Puzzled, Brittany joined Ethan. “What did you say, Ethan?” “Feet,” he repeated. All she could see were the overgrown trees beyond their yard. So she “crouched down to her son’s level and looked where he was pointing” (www.cbs46.com/2022/08/15/coweta-co-toddler-finds-missing-elderly-woman-while-playing-with-bubbles/).

There between the slats, she saw a pair of human feet. She panicked. “‘I didn’t know if I needed to go into fight or flight’” (ibid.). Clearly, there was a body on the other side of their fence. Dead? Alive? She dialed 9-1-1.

“When first responders arrived, they realized it was 82-year-old Nina Lipscomb, who had been missing since Monday night [this was on Friday], according to her family” (ibid). For four days and nights, authorities had been searching for this missing senior citizen with early-stage Alzheimers, even using thermal technology in the search. All to no avail.

Instead, a little boy chasing a fly-away bubble found the confused but still very much alive Nina Lipscomb. Nina met Ethan soon after she was released from the hospital. “‘I truly think this was something outside of what any human could do,’ said [Ethan’s mother]. ‘It took a child who was being worked by God’” (ibid). 

Nina’s family agrees, “the toddler likely saved her life.”

Just a pair of feet—but what a story it tells. Makes you wonder. How many pairs of feet will soon be stepping onto our campus and walking into our church? And what will be the stories they will tell?

New students, returning students—first comers and veterans—are we ready once again to open the doors to our hearts and our church to these many pairs of feet?

One of the most effective ways Pioneer has discovered to get to know new students is our annual New Student Welcome Dinner we host out under the trees beside our church. On their first Sabbath away from home (August 27), what better occasion to invite them to our friendly tables, set with a home-cooked lasagna/pasta dinner, replete with salad and garlic bread (my mouth waters, just thinking about it!)—dessert and drinks provided by the church.

We need forty host families willing to be Love on the Move and provide this delectable we’re-glad-you’re-here kind of dinner for a table of ten. Along with the food, Karen and I pass around a clipboard for the new students to jot down their names and contact info. That clipboard becomes our prayer list. And our adopt-a-student (or two or three or four) list for the weeks ahead. 

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if a bunch of Love on the Move Pioneer families decided to adopt a bunch of Andrews students and invited them to our homes now and then during the new year ahead? I can guarantee they’ll love you for it. And maybe even love Jesus more because of your loving welcome.

So please take a moment and call Claudia or Lailane at 269.471.3543 and let us know you’d like to serve ten pairs of feet (and ten hungry souls) on August 27. Call us right away, so we can count on you. (If you’re not able to attend the picnic dinner but would like to contribute food, please indicate that when you call.)

On behalf of those pairs of feet who are waiting for somebody to find them . . . and on behalf of the very same Jesus who still says “Do it to them, you’re doing it to Me” (see Matthew 25:40)—thank you very much.

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*Thank you, Melchizedek Ponniah.