Seeing what these kids write on the stones breaks my heart.

As you know, Mercy Chefs has been on-site at the Lonesome Dove Ranch providing hot meals to abused and neglected foster children along with the staff and volunteers here. Each week-long camp concludes with a very emotional gathering in which the children are provided a small white stone and given the opportunity to symbolically write on it something they want to leave in God's hands.

We're in our second week of feeding underprivileged at-risk foster kids at Lonesome Dove Ranch in Texas. Mercy Chefs has been part of this annual outreach for four years, and this year we helped complete the permanent kitchen that will enable this ministry to reach even more hurting kids.

+ + "These kids wrecked me"

But the kids aren't the only ones touched by our efforts to feed body and soul. This is also a life-changing experience for the workers on site. Here's what one of our volunteers shared about her experience:

As I've been sharing with you, this Spring and Summer Mercy Chefs is helping launch four standalone kitchen projects that together will provide thousands of meals this summer and beyond. While these projects have been under way, we also were recently deployed in Ohio in response to the "swarm" of tornadoes that struck the Dayton area. It's been a busy several weeks!

I'm thrilled to report that our work in Texas with the Lonesome Dove Ranch is already making a difference this summer. Lonesome Dove is the home to an amazing ministry that is providing summer camps to disadvantaged foster children in Texas, many who have faced unspeakable difficulties in their young lives.

+ + Amazing encounters for hurting kids...

All this week, our Mercy Chefs team has had the privilege of helping to meet the needs of those helping in the aftermath of the tornadoes that hit the Dayton region. As we noted, some of the neighborhoods were unrecognizable as the destruction from tornadoes as strong as EF-4 ripped through communities.

This is precisely why Mercy Chefs exists -- to help meet a critical need during times of disaster and provide hot meals that feed "body and soul." 

Our team in the Dayton, Ohio area is hard at work again today providing hot meals to the volunteer teams that have come here to help residents with the cleanup. As we go out into the communities, we come face-to-face with the need. Yesterday, one of our volunteer chefs saw a woman sitting on what remained of her front porch. She was weeping -- clearly still disoriented by what had happened to her home and her neighborhood which was probably now almost unrecognizable to her.

"Could we get you something hot to eat?" our chef asked.

She nodded. Perhaps that's all she could muster.

Today, Mercy Chefs is continuing to provide hot meals for the many volunteers who have come to the Dayton area to help with the recovery after a "swarm" of tornadoes hit this region. Lunch today was just amazing as we have been delivering meals
out into the neighborhoods where volunteers are busy helping those who are still trying to get their bearings straight in the aftermath of the storm.

I wish you could have seen what I saw today in the grateful faces of those we are helping -- especially when we bring a chef-prepared, hot meal to them and not just emergency "rations"! For example, here is what was on the Mercy Chefs menu today:

Root beer injected pork with a pineapple herb glaze, sweet potato and white potato mash, fresh green beans with onions and bacon, fresh roll, and watermelon.

Our hearts are heavy as we grieve for the families impacted by the tragic shooting in Virginia Beach, just a few miles from our Mercy Chefs home office. Mercy Chefs will do whatever we can to be part of the healing in our local community as we continue to answer the calls for help from across the country.

Today here in Beavercreek,
our team recently finished serving our first meal -- lunch to volunteers who are helping with the extensive cleanup effort. No matter how many times I see the devastation left behind by these massive storms, it is always sobering. Houses leveled. Trees uprooted and mangled. Buildings destroyed. Whole neighborhoods devastated.

As I write, Ann and I and our Mercy Chefs team recently arrived in Dayton, Ohio -- one of the epicenters of the "swarm" of hundreds of tornadoes that have ravaged Ohio and the Midwest in recent weeks.

Earlier this week, a massive EF-4 tornado with wind speeds of up to 170mph ripped through Dayton and nearby Beavercreek, leaving a trail of destruction in its path. In Beavercreek alone, an estimated 1,000 homes and buildings have sustained damage, with hundreds having enough damage to possibly be uninhabitable or even a total loss.

I just filed this report on progress on the transition of the school in Panama City into our "Beacon Of Hope" center, along with updates on the recent tornadoes and flooding that have hit the Midwest.

We need your help to get this vision launched! Go here to donate:

(NOTE: IF THE VIDEO DOES NOT PLAY, GO HERE.)

This is a CRITICAL week.

My team is rushing to get our Florida relief efforts focusing on thousands of children still homeless as a result of Hurricane Michael officially launched. Our plans now are to formally open our "Beacon Of Hope" center in the shuttered school that Panama City officials are allowing us to use by next Thursday (June 6).

That puts an enormous amount of pressure on this week to get the kitchen ready while we also retrofit the classrooms into bunkhouse rooms that can house up to 80 volunteers. Here's why the bunkhouse rooms are so critical...