What would Jesus do? In Brownsville, he’d serve spaghetti

BROWNSVILLE—“Big Red,” a massive trailer that houses a state-of-the-art mobile feeding unit, caught Cosme Sanchez’ eyes when he drove down Brownsville’s Old Alice Road.

And when the 83-year-old saw the Red Cross panel trucks loading up forklift loads of food, he figured he had come to exactly the right place to find help for the dozen or so people he was feeding before Hurricane Dolly swept through South Texas.

The fact that the unit—a joint effort of Baptist Child & Family Services and Texas Baptist Men—was churning out lunches and dinners by the thousands didn’t deter him.

So, he tracked down Ed Emmons, who works for BCFS and volunteers with TBM, to put in his order.

“We’re set up to feed in mass,” Emmons explained. “We are feeding the two BCFS shelters, plus 5,000 lunches and 5,000 dinners for the Red Cross.”

All Sanchez wanted was 10 meals.

TBM volunteers already had finished cooking lunch and were cleaning up while the last footlockers of food sped away.

Emmons took Sanchez to where the leftovers from the previous night’s supper was stored and personally prepared 10 meals—including extra grape juice for the children.

“This was an interruption to the operation, no doubt about that,” Emmons admitted. “The temptation was to tell him to go to a shelter and get food there because we don’t do individual meals. But here is a man who feeds poor people out of his own pocket on an ongoing basis.  It was one of those ‘What Would Jesus Do?’ moments.  And the answer was obvious.

“Jesus would have fixed plates of leftover spaghetti.”