A Peek Behind The LOLI Curtain – Part 1

Today we begin Panama Ora week. Teams from all around the country and Canada will converge on Panama City to call a nation to pray. It is going to be an awesome week of experiencing God at work.

If you have read any of the previous blogs, then you know you can expect to read daily updates on Panama Ora and all the activities and stories that go with it. But what you haven’t read about and what most LOLI team members have never experienced are the stories and activities of the advance team that arrives the week before the crusade.

One of the reasons you have not read about the advance team is because I do most of the blogging on the LOLI site, and I have never had the opportunity to go with the advanced team. That is, until this year. It is the week before Panama Ora, and I have spent the last two days here in Panama with the advance team preparing for the crusade. I would like to share with you what happens while the advance team prepares the food bags that are distributed during the crusade week. There is a lot of work that goes into these crusades. This is just a small sample of some of that work.

We arrived on Wednesday evening from Texas. Our primary purpose was to prepare all the food distribution sites for the teams that will come next week. Each crusade is different, but for Panama that means five different locations with over 1,000 bags of food per site. These bags will be distributed by the teams Tuesday through Friday mornings in and around the five distribution sites.~

To give you an idea of what makes up a bag here in Panama, each family who receives a bag will get the following:

– 1 pound of corn
– 1 pound of beans
– A bag of rice
– A bag of sugar
– A bag of salt
– A bottle of oil

These are basic necessities for poor families who live on very little. It can be a huge blessing to receive one of these bags. Our goal by the end of the week is to distribute over 5,000 bags of food.

While there is a lot of labor that goes into distributing the bags of food, there is also a lot of labor that goes into preparing the bags of food. In the next post, I will detail where the food comes from and how it gets to the distribution sites.

For more information on Panama Prays or Light of Life International, email team@loli.org.