Stepping out of one's comfort zone can lead to life's most profound callings, a truth Carl Ladd, Vice President of Mercy Chefs Global, knows all too well. His journey to the frontlines of global disaster relief is a testament to the courage found in service to others. Join us as Carl shares his gripping life story, marked by an upbringing among missionary work that clearly etched his path toward aiding those in desperate need. His tales from around the globe—filled with struggles and triumphs—reveal the need for compassion and the power of a shared meal.
Stepping out of one's comfort zone can lead to life's most profound callings, a truth Carl Ladd, Vice President of Mercy Chefs Global, knows all too well. His journey to the frontlines of global disaster relief is a testament to the courage found in service to others. Join us as Carl shares his gripping life story, marked by an upbringing among missionary work that clearly etched his path toward aiding those in desperate need. His tales from around the globe—filled with struggles and triumphs—reveal the need for compassion and the power of a shared meal.
Hey, buddy, special guest, someone I've been excited to have on the podcast for a long time. Ladies and gentlemen, this is Carl Ladd. Carl, what's your title?
Speaker 2:Vice President at Mercy Chefs Global Awesome.
Speaker 1:Well, thanks for being here today, Carl. Appreciate you taking the time, Absolutely Excited to be here. So, Carl, to start this out, let's dive into who you are, because I think you've got a very fascinating past and background. So tell me about being a young man, a child growing up around the world on different YWAM bases. Oh man going all the way back.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was like you said. I was growing up in YWAM as a YWAM kid. So my family, my parents, were missionaries from a young age. I think I was four or five when my dad quit his very lucrative engineering job in Southern California and my mom was working as well. They kind of quit that whole life, sold everything and went into the mission field. So that's honestly all my memories are that of being in the missionary field, hopping around different YY bases and this weird polarity of living on a base in the States or coming back and visiting my grandparents that were, you know, very, very successful and then spending months overseas in incredibly impoverished areas. We spent quite a bit of time actually in Ukraine, which I'm spending a lot of time there these days, but it was right after the wall came down in the early 90s and, yeah, getting to experience real poverty, real suffering, in the same time experiencing the fullness of God and the gospel going forth and people hungry for the more of the Lord in the midst of suffering.
Speaker 1:Absolutely Very cool, A very cool thing to grow up in and I think has set you up very well for your current role as vice president of Mercy Chefs Global, Because, if I can remember off the top of my head, there's been at least three places that you have lived or spent time that Mercy Chefs has now served. In Ukraine we went back you were on the basin on the Big Island right, and then we went to Maui so same state, but close by and then I know you had I don't know if you were ever in Tijuana, but certainly had friends there and we stayed there the first time, one of the first times that we went down that way, that's right.
Speaker 2:Yep, yep, friends in Tijuana. Yeah, my wife and I spent the first majority of our first year of marriage in Sudan, and so we've been able to start doing some feeding programs there as well, as well as Uganda. So, yeah, I the I mean Lord's been incredibly gracious to me, kind of setting me up for success from from a young age. You know, it's actually kind of crazy. You know, I was actually just meeting with some friends and kind of talking like talking about kind of our life goals or what we feel like our purpose is, and for me, I would have dreams when I was five, six years old, as a as a kid, dreaming about rescuing people and working in disasters, like from a super young age. My parents I didn't even remember that my parents would tell me about them and they were reoccurring dreams, and so from a young age I knew I wanted to be where people were hurting, where people needed help, where people needed to be rescued. That's where I knew God was calling me to, and so it's just kind of been following that path.
Speaker 1:Right, and then you did some schooling, some college schooling, in that area as well. Right, specialized training in firefighting.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I got my Bachelor's of Science in International Rescue and rescue and relief and disaster management, the emphasis in global health, and so, yeah, it was obviously had a lot of components for domestic disaster response, with a lot of FEMA courses, a lot of technical rescue, and so, and then through that, I became an instructor for technical rescue for the region, teaching firehouses, national Guard universities and colleges, things like that in the field of technical rescue. So everything from rope rescue, swift water, searching rivers and flood, flood water management, confined space, you name it. I was teaching it and running crews for that in the fire world. So I did that for several years and then running a disaster response program for that college that I was previously a student at.
Speaker 1:Right, right. And then the next step was a friend of Mercy Chef's, and I would say that you burgeoned that friendship between two organizations and that's Bethel Church out in Redding California.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, those were the good old days when I got to meet Gary for the first time. So I left the program, that college program that I was running. We moved out to here in Northern California where I'm still at, and started working for Bethel Church running their disaster response program organization called Bethel Global Response and it was I think it was in 2015, if I remember right there was fires down more in central California and I was leading a team from Bethel there we're doing ash out, sifting through the ashes, and it's brutal. Ash outs are one of the most brutal, brutal responses. There's no shade. You know it's. It's Northern or Central California, so it's 110 degrees every day and you're in full coverall Tyvek suits, sifting through ashes, looking for diamonds and dog tags and whatever made it through the fire, and it's incredible ministry opportunity. You know, we see these pendulums of people that have lost everything. You find something to give back to them. Um, you know, it's the first time they've realized they haven't lost everything. And you see this pendulum of hope.
Speaker 2:But my team was just dragging, like I mean, we were suffering, we were eating mres. Uh, it was a brutal deployment and I heard this rumor that there was this group down the street that was serving really good food and I was like now, we're good, we've, we've had, we've had other groups feed us, we're, we'll stick with our mres because I don't want anybody getting sick, you know right. And they're like no, no, it's, it's really good food. You gotta go check it out. And so I I left my team and kind of drove down the street and started looking and uh, there's this kitchen trailer and some tents outside, like I think this is the place.
Speaker 2:And started I stuck my head in the trailer because nobody was around and this guy was in there cooking. He's like just give me a minute, I'll be right out. Go sit in the shade, I'll be right out. And uh, it was gary, chef gary. So he comes out, I'm sitting there in the shade, I'm filthy with ash all over me, and he comes walking up to me with a plate with this, this fresh, gooey cinnamon roll. He just pulled out of that and that's why he needed a minute, because he was pulling these cinnamon rolls out of that. And he walks up and gives me that and he's like what are you? What's going on? What? What can I do for you?
Speaker 1:I was just like what is this?
Speaker 2:and uh, that was the. That was my first encounter with gary and, uh, from that moment on, I just like, I mean, obviously fell in love with gary, but fell in love with the, the vision of mercy chef, so of feeding people, feeding body and soul, whether it's first responders and rescuers or, you know, obviously people that have experienced the worst day of their life mercy chefs is there for them, and so I got to be the recipient of that. And then, after that, I would call gary and be like hey wait, are you deploying? Okay, what? What part of the city are you gonna set up? And so I feel I want to be driving this thing, you know, so I can come over while the cinnamon rolls are still hot, absolutely, and that was the start of a great friendship.
Speaker 1:And last to this day and hopefully long into the future. And after that moment, mercy chefs and bethel global response worked tightly in a lot of areas. Uh, lots of great work done together. But I think at least the first couple times I met you I you were still at bgr and I was like I love working with carl, I love working with BGR, but I think Carl belongs at Mercy Chefs and that's no shade on anybody. But looking at the scope of work that we do and the vision for the future, I always kind of had this sense that Carl would fit in really, really well here.
Speaker 1:And thankfully the Lord provided, spoke to those who needed to be spoken to, and and here we are. So talk to me about you know those first couple of conversations with Gary about? I'm sure there were many conversations if I, if I had to guess, but those conversations about you know what? What he and Ann were dreaming of and what we were looking to start with, with you at the top of yeah, like, like you said it, you said it was a beautiful partnership.
Speaker 2:You know, obviously Bethel didn't do food. We did a lot of, you know, more debris management stuff, saw work, just running crews primarily, which fit really well. We always needed to feed our crews, but then we also had, because it's Bethel Church, we also had a pretty good supply of volunteers that we could help, so then we were able to kind of help manage volunteers and push volunteers towards mercy stuff. So it was a beautiful collaborative thing and I love collaboration the more I can. The more organizations that we can get to the table that are truly working to glorify the name of Jesus and just give the best service we can to those people we're there to serve. I'm all for. And so Gary and I obviously worked really closely in that and, yeah, gary, gary, multiple times was like hey, what are you going to? What are you going to come?
Speaker 1:over fully to our side.
Speaker 2:Like I love working with you, carl, I want to work with you full time. And I had my employee, you, you know, but for years I kind of just pushed it off. I'm like I'm not a chef, gary, I'm not a chef like I like I can do dishes and that's all you want me doing in the kitchen, like. But uh, and I just really knew god had me at that, I knew that was where I was supposed to be and we were building something. But obviously the friendship and the partnership continued to grow and really it came to a pinnacle or kind of the full expression of how that partnership could work together with our response to Ukraine.
Speaker 2:And that's really where Gary and I got to kind of we had run multiple deployments, kind of parallel to each other or working with each other, but ukraine was really the first where we kind of came together and and had a unified response as two organizations, um and gary and I getting to work really closely, hand in hand together in serving ukraine in the you know, just a couple days after that, the initial invasion of russia.
Speaker 2:And so it's just incredible seeing how, when, when we, when we work together and we kind of put put together our different passions and our and our skill sets, of how, of the magnitude that we were able to to, to see God do, um, you know, and and a few months we'd done millions of pounds into ukraine and specifically into the areas that nobody else was able to get anything into. And so it's this beautiful thing of I've seen the local church network and missionaries from bethel that had connections, had resources, and then our strategic ability and mercy chef's knowledge on, on food and, you know, being able to basically start a whole warehousing operation and trucking operation. It was an incredible magnitude of an operation, right, right and humbling to be part of. And so it was. It was, it was kind of a ways into that response where gary was like, hey, we, we could do this you know, like you, you're getting a taste of what this is when we're together, like how do you come?
Speaker 2:And I was like I don't know if it's time yet. I don't think I don't know if it's time, gary, I love you and I want to continue to grow with you. I don't know if it's time yet. Yeah, and then I guess it was November of 22, mercy Chefs officially decided to launch Mercy Chefs Global, a really intentional go after. How do we build and be intentional about working overseas? Mercy Chefs has always responded. Where there's need, mercy Chefs responds. They've had a global expression for a long time. Responded. Where there's need, mercy chef's response. So there's, they've done that. You know they've had a global expression for a long time since you know I mean 2010 gary's response to haiti like that was a massive response. You know there's been multiple other responses since then, but really in 2022 they took the step to say, you know, intentionally, we're going to build internationally. We feel the Lord calling us to this and kind of increasing the scale of what they're able to operate internationally.
Speaker 2:And so obviously Gary made sure I was aware of that launch and their intentions with that. Gary and Ann kind of brought me in and said hey, this is where we're wanting this to go and we really want you leading it. And that's always been my passion is the international side working with refugees, working in the darkest places. Where's the hardest, where's nobody else going? You know, where is that darkest storm? That's where I want to be working, that's where I want to be working, it's where that's where I encounter jesus the most, that's where I think we can be most effective. And that was gary nance heart and say, carl, we, we want to run, we need somebody that can run for us into these dark places, into these storms, and and we think it's you. And so my wife and I prayed about it and my wife, my wife, like immediately was like, carl, this is for you, like we're, we're doing this.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was like and honestly it was, it was really hard, a hard, hard time. Like I absolutely love Bethel Church, I love Bethel Global Response, what we were able to build there and do there, and they're still doing incredible work. I'm still, you know, tied in. I have a lot of friendships and relationships there. I'm still very well connected.
Speaker 2:But it's really hard to let go of something that is so good, you know, and so, feeling Lord called me to a season shift. But you know, I've had season shifts where it's like a bitter season or like a hard season. You're like, oh, thank god, I couldn't wait for this season to be over, you know. But this wasn't not. This is a season where I felt like we were thriving, we were building we're you know we were, we were going places, um, and I was comfortable and I was enjoying it. So it's hard to let go of.
Speaker 2:But I I had a meeting with one of my mentors and I was like, how do I let go of a good thing like I'm so comfortable here? I know this is such a good thing. How do I let go of something? He? He told me he's like well, you know what? You know what churchill said about comfort? I was like, no, I don't. And he's like the thing about comfort is it makes cowards of men. Don't be a coward, carl, do what the Lord's telling you to do. And I was like, oh, okay, I can't argue with that. And for me it was just letting go of what's comfortable, what's good for what I know God was calling me into and that was Mercy Chefs Global. I'm so glad that happened just over a year ago.
Speaker 1:I think we all are and it's been a wild ride ever since. But I love how you put that, that Mercy Chefs Global is an expression of Mercy Chefs, that it is maybe a little different in name, but in practice and in the vision it's just an expression of the vision expressed to Gary all those years ago Feed people, just go feed people, and oftentimes we have to go a little further and into maybe some darker places, some harder places, but it's always the same vision and it's it's get get to those places, get to the people who need it and share love on a plate. And I think you guys do such an incredible job of that and I want to talk about some of those places that you guys have been here in the last couple years. You're right, mercy Chefs has been global for a long time lots of responses but having it codified and coordinated under the heading of Mercy Chefs Global, I think, has broadened our reach and specified our reach in a way as well that we're able to find need quicker and with more effectiveness than we ever have been Um.
Speaker 1:But there's a couple of places in specific on, uh, this Western hemisphere that I want to talk about that you and Gary and um Wanda Augusto uh, director of Latin American Latin American for Mercy Chefs Global. There are three places that you guys put on a board a couple years ago that were. Those were the places we were reaching for, that felt hard to get to, but were goals to reach for. Tell me about those places and where we're at now with them.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. I mean we can't get there until we talk about Wanda. Wanda is such a pillar.
Speaker 1:You're so right, we do need to talk about Wanda.
Speaker 2:And she's been part of Mercy Chefs. I mean she volunteered for Mercy Chefs for years. She's a pastor, she was missionary for like 15 years in Honduras, lives in Puerto Rico. So she's been part of many Mercy Chef's deployments and responses, both domestically and internationally, and she's another one that Gary's been having his eye on for years now and trying to get.
Speaker 2:So Wanda, she finally came on just before me. Actually, she was the first official global employee as director of Latin America. She's got such an incredible heart for seeing the church thrive and missions thrive, in Spanish-speaking countries especially, but all over the world, honestly. And so when I came on, gary and I connected and our first thing to do was to go go with wanda to the Dominican Republic as they had just gotten gone through a storm and we had done some work there and then to Honduras to see, uh where we're building the community kitchen which we'll probably get to at another, another conversation but but yeah and so on that first meeting, um, it was my first time uh really connecting with wanda. I'd met her previously on on some other uh trips, but this was my first time uh really connecting with wanda. I'd met her previously on on some other uh trips, but this is my first time really getting to connect with her and and that's knowing okay, we're gonna be working together.
Speaker 2:We're now both mercy chef before we're just volunteers and friends of mercy chef and so gary and I and wanda, it was one of our first meetings, uh, as we're just kind of talking and kind of vision casting okay, where what is global going to be? What are we going to prioritize? Where's the lord calling us? You know, we really were looking at central america and latin america as kind of our, our trial basis or like our, like low-hanging fruit of like we know we have access in this area, we know there's need, we have great church relations, like let's start going after this. Um, and there is easy wins the vatican republic, puerto rico, honda, like these places that are easy, yeah, um, but you know, gary gary especially, was like guys, we can't, we're not gonna do just what's easy or or what's there for the taking. I want us being intentional about what is.
Speaker 2:Where are the hard places? Where are the places that other other aid, other other help isn't getting? How do we work? How do we places? Um, and so, almost unanimously, the three of us were like cuba, nicaragua, venezuela, like those are the places that for political reasons, for safety reasons, for access reasons, they're the hardest, like they're, they're the ones that have the largest, the highest level of need and also the highest, the most obstacles to meeting that need. And so we kind of those were the ones that kind of put on the board of like all right, we're going to. Let's start praying into this. Like Lord, how, how do you want to work and how can we help people in need in these places? In your name, I'm happy to say we have programming in all three of those.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely. It's been such an amazing season, hasn't it, Of open doors and prayers answered in those places and prayers answered in those places and from the sidelines of here at headquarters and watching you guys from afar and talking with you on our weekly update calls. It's been just such a cool thing to see that we launched this thing a little under two years ago and to see it just skyrocket and the amount of impact that it's had since being codified as it has been has been so cool. Do you know off the top of your head how many meals we did last year globally?
Speaker 2:uh, yeah, I believe you're gonna quote me on this.
Speaker 1:I believe it was 1.1 or 1.2 million yeah, just an amazing amount of food going around the world. And to see the continuation of Mercy Chef's vision expand to so many places and enable so many conversations about our Lord and Savior is just so cool and I love watching it. And I want to circle back a little bit to one of those places that really brought. You know, you and us like you mentioned um together and and we're just passing a milestone, maybe one that certainly a milestone nobody wanted to pass, one that maybe people have forgotten about, um. But it's been two years almost to the day, two years and a week, since you and Gary and Ann and a few others landed on the ground in Ukraine for our first effort at a response over there. And I still remember you called me about two years and two weeks ago and you said hey, nick, this is what I'm doing and I want you guys involved. And you asked me and I said I've got a little boy at home. My wife would probably say no if I told her I was going to the scariest active war zone that anyone in their right mind would go.
Speaker 1:And I remember Gary said to me sometime last year as relief supplies from, you know, larger international organizations were making it to some of those places, he said, nick, we've been there and we've been in those places, and maybe it's because we don't know any better.
Speaker 1:And these, these bigger players, say, oh well, you know it. Maybe it's because we don't know any better, and these bigger players say, oh well, you know, it's not safe, we can't get there. And you know yada, yada, yada, this and that and the other, and maybe that's true, but we did get there and we did get food to people in bomb shelters in Kharkiv and places along the front lines. So I want to know from you you've been there, I don't know, close to a dozen times at this point and you know more intimately than anyone the scope of this war, what it looks like two years on, and we can talk to or we can watch the news for those updates. But I want to know about the people on the ground, the people that are receiving supplies from frontline workers, who are partnered with Mercy Chefs in beat up old trucks carrying food on their backs. What are you seeing these days from those people that we're touching?
Speaker 2:Yeah, when you say, what do you see in ukraine? Like I mean, you see absolute hell and you see absolute beauty. Like you see, you, you are literally confronted in the same moment with that some of the absolute worst of humanity and some of the best of humanity. Like you're, you're walking through villages, uh, you know, or what used to be cities, that are just completely leveled, completely obliterated, with hundreds of bombs falling every day. You know, bombs are going off as you're walking through and you're finding these little bomb shelters where people are, are basically buried underground and living there for two years now, and it's just hell.
Speaker 2:And you go into these, into these little dank, musty, dark rooms underground and our local, all our local volunteers, our legends, these pastors, these these guys that just have a heart to serve and to not see their country lose hope, and they go into these places and they're laughing and they start, they start just lifting the atmosphere in these places, they start praying for people, they start sharing the gospel and you just see hope, enter these people's eyes. You, you, we first show up and you can just, you look in their eyes and they're just barely there, like they're just, they're just barely holding on. You know, um, and by the end of of our, of our time with them, praying with them, giving them a hot, delicious meal, uh, with fresh bread, that that we bake or that a bakery bakes, every morning we go and early, pick it up and drive it to these front lines. Their, their complexion is different, their eyes are different, their um, it's just incredible.
Speaker 2:And so you see this, like these, this crazy and this is why I go so often and why I always want to go back is like you see, this incredible um, these polar moments, um, within each other, of despair and desperation and and evil, and in the same moment, you see beauty and generosity and the fullness of god, uh, at work. And so it's a, it's a beautiful thing, but the the reason we've been able to be successful, the reason, like Gary said, we, we were there, you know, weeks before other organizations were where, you know, the UN and the red cross, and they, they basically section off places and they said these places are inaccessible, like it's impossible to get aid there. They made those announcements multiple times after we've already been there for weeks and it's like, oh well we've been here for weeks.
Speaker 2:It's not impossible for us, but the reason we were able to do that is because of the local church, and it's a pillar of Mercy Chefs is we want to work through the local church. We want to come alongside and be there, uh, an encouragement to them, a resource for them, uh, and and expand what, what their heart is to do. We want to expand it. One of our, one of our key leaders on the ground, his name's Andre. He was a, he was a pastor, he had a prison ministry, um, and then, and then the the actual, the initial invasion back in 2014, when they moved in and annexed Crimea and all that um, he lost his church and his ministry there because the front lines moved on to it. And so he started delivering bread and just food and doing what he could with his car to these, these communities on the front line, and he did that for six years by himself.
Speaker 2:And then we found him outside of Bakhmuthmut as we were starting to serve there and his car was empty. He's like, yeah, I don't have the resources anymore to be able to bring the food or the bread to these families anymore, but I still go visit them and pray with them. And so we were like like well, can we fill your car and you go do the prayer and ministry and you know? And so for two years we've been able to partner with him and he's, he's now one of our leaders. But, um, it's those kind of guys that are just like empty car if I got food or not, I'm going because these people need hope they need. But then when we're able to partner with them and supply that hot meal, um, it's just amazing the doors that that opens and and, uh, like gary says, a lot happens over a shared meal. Um, yeah, and a lot happens over a shared meal in the midst of bombing. Absolutely, a lot more happens right right.
Speaker 1:I love what you said in there, that and it echoes with the Heart of Mercy chefs that we work through the local church and I think sometimes it's easy to look at our American view of the church building down the street or here in downtown Portsmouth, the local church and all those impact their community in some small way. But I think it's easy to forget that the church exists outside of your town and local churches exist across the world and we are honored to partner with the church big C across the world and the local church in all sorts of places, so I'm going to list off the most up-to-date list I have.
Speaker 1:This changes day to day, folks, so please excuse me if we're leaving anything out, but I think this is a very accurate list of the impact that we're having right now around the world through the local church the local church in Cuba, the local church in the Dominican Republic, in Greece, Honduras, Kenya, Mexico, Mozambique, Myanmar, Honduras, Kenya, Mexico, Mozambique, Myanmar, Puerto Rico, Uganda, Ukraine, Venezuela. That is our alphabetized list at the moment of all the places that Mercy Chefs is enabling the local church to serve their community by coming alongside them. And I think that's just such a beautiful thing that sometimes we forget and you know, and we love sharing on socials and through our emails what we're doing in these places, but oftentimes the grand view of all the places that we are, I think, gets lost as we touch on those really beautiful individual stories. So I want to zoom out a little bit and just get a sense of that list. That's a good coverage of the globe at the moment and there are some places in there that are seeing just incredible strife and pain at the moment and we've been invited into these places.
Speaker 1:Uganda, I know, is new, Myanmar is relatively new. I know that there's ongoing talks in the Sudan and all sorts of places like this. So, Carl, I want to pick your brain a little bit about. You know some of those places where you know, maybe we don't have boots on the ground every day, but we're making an impact. I was hearing stories from an African pastor. Forgive me, I don't know if I remember if it was Uganda or Sudan or Mozambique, but an African pastor saying that he hadn't done a funeral in two weeks because finally he had enough food.
Speaker 1:Sudan, he hadn't done a funeral in two weeks because finally there was enough food to serve those communities. From your experience, what does Mercy Chefs coming alongside the local church really mean on the ground? Mercy Chefs?
Speaker 2:coming alongside the local church, really mean on the ground. Yeah, I mean it's a wide spectrum. I mean Sudan, that story they were going through it. I mean it was tragic. And in the course of two months this was specifically in Darfur, sudan. In two months they had experienced a coup which led to a civil war, which led to genocide starting back up in Darfur, genocide specifically against the African Christians. And then that was all in the midst of a famine, one of the worst famines in the last decade. And then, at the end of those two months, they had a torrential rainstorm that brought severe flooding and wiped out all of the displaced shelters, homes that they had made.
Speaker 2:And so you know, when the coup and the violence first started, I reached out through some friends and found a few pastors that were caring for a community. They, along with many of their neighbors, had had to flee the main city in Darfur, and so they were living in kind of the bush and trying to care for one another. And so there's about 500 of them, but they had absolutely no food. The rebel group, the Janjaweed, had taken over all the markets and weren't selling to Christians or Africans, and they were just literally starving to death. And when they could get food, it was outrageously priced, so it was cost prohibitive. What food they could find, they couldn't buy because they didn't have the money for it? Yeah, because they didn't have the money for it. And so, honestly, through some miraculous connections and again, the local church, we were able to get resources in there to these key pastors, these key church leaders that then were able to feed their entire community, and the majority of their community was actually Muslim. So, all of a sudden, in the midst of genocide, of religious and ethnic genocide, you have the primary victims of that genocide now serving and providing and loving their enemies. And so it was a beautiful thing and we saw all kinds of salvations and people come and experience Jesus for the first time through that generosity of food.
Speaker 2:And we also saw yeah, that's when the pastor said I haven't, I haven't done a funeral for anybody that died of hunger in the last two weeks. He told me this through tears, he says that's. I asked him how it was going at like, how, I think I said like how are we, you know, basically getting at like? Are we meeting our goals? Are we being successful? Like, are we able to distribute the way we thought we were going to distribute, like I was kind of just doing my normal like monitoring, evaluation, making sure we're hitting our, our objectives, right, yeah. And when he responds with that, like I was like yes, we were able to distribute to X amount of families, right. And he's like, yeah, we're successful, I haven't done a funeral, I was just like, oh, wow, like Lord you know, and so that we see that level of that's what Mercy Chefs is doing is literally sustaining life, yeah.
Speaker 2:And then we see other, maybe less extreme but still impactful, where we get to come alongside churches, come alongside churches in Latin America, where we're seeing I think we've seen like a dozen new churches planted and started as the church is growing, as you know, in Cuba. Like we've seen multiple church locations start in Cuba because of how the church is able to partner with food. We call it food evangelism, but basically like giving the church a resource that they can then reach out to their community, allows the gospel to go forth at just an incredible rate and people to encounter jesus over a hot meal and so, um, yeah, it's, it's, uh, it's a beautiful thing. You know, we, we can't do what we do without the local church and our focus and our goal is to expand what the church is able to do and expand the excellence that they're able to do too. We do a lot of. We bring our chefs and do a lot of training. So, on sanitation and hygiene, making sure that they're getting quality meals, healthy meals, full nutritional balance and they're not getting anybody sick Right, absolutely, that's the thing, you know.
Speaker 2:There's a saying I forget who said it, but somebody said that the quality of our work becomes a platform of our witness in context of sharing the gospel. You know so if we go in and we give a meal, that's going to get everybody sick, or we give us, you know, a subpar meal that nobody enjoys. That's going to be what stays with them and that's going to be the platform that the gospel is presented on. Yeah, but when we go in and we give a high quality, delicious, highly nutritious bowl meal, it's a different platform that then the gospel is able to ride on. So that's our goal is to get these churches, train these churches up so that they can get the best that they can, right.
Speaker 1:Amazing. We say it all the time and it's true, which is why we say it all the time. But something amazing happens over a shared meal, especially in the hardest places, and it's easy to say that day to day, day in, day out, and we repeat it to each other on meetings and in conversation as staff here at Mercy Chefs. And then you look at the end point, where that meal actually exists and who it exists for in the moment, and it's beyond amazing.
Speaker 1:And it's beyond amazing and it's beyond anything that we as humans could ever really do. And we say often enough as well that we just put food on the plate and the Lord does what he will do with it, and we hope that our witness is high enough and good enough to share people the good news, and we're honored to do that. Now, to close this out, I usually do this at the beginning and I apologize that I didn't get to it at the beginning. I got so excited. But I ask everybody who comes on the podcast, what's your most memorable hey buddy call? Because it's Gary's favorite thing is to call you up and say hey, buddy. So I want to know if you have one that you remember. I'm going to put you on the spot.
Speaker 2:Oh man, you know I'm I might be in an interesting position here, um, but but the memories that are coming is when I've actually gotten to do a hey buddy to Gary. I don't know if that's breaking your thing, but.
Speaker 1:I'll allow it. I think that works.
Speaker 2:You know, being that Gary's giving me the honor of being vice president of Global. He's kind of giving me like, hey, I need you monitoring Global and letting me know what's happening.
Speaker 2:So, there's oftentimes where I have to be the one that calls Gary. So obviously we've talked about the hey buddy call when it was through you eventually to gary, uh, hey, buddy, I'm going to ukraine and there's gonna be hungry people. You want, I'd love for you to be part. But then, uh, the next, the next big one was actually turkey. Turkey earthquakes happened. I think it was like two weeks, maybe three weeks, after gary hired me. Yeah, so I was still going through staff orientation, like I have never deployed as mercy chefs or like anyway so. But earthquake hits. I get an alert on my phone and you know it's sunday, late at night or something like that, and I'm like, here we go. And so I called gary and got to say, hey, buddy, there's a big one just hit turkey. I need a book of flight, and so that was good, and so that was. That was the first official mercy chefs global. You know, disaster deployment, right deployment, that came in a hurry.
Speaker 1:It very much did, and it often happens that way, and it was a doozy.
Speaker 2:Turkey was a wild ride, but so proud of the impact that we were able to have there. I mean tens and tens of thousands of meals that we pushed out through the local church in communities that previously had said churches can't operate or do anything in. By the end of, I think, our five months of operating there, they were asking the local church to set up a center, a community center, in the middle of their city to continue to serve for the long haul. So pretty incredible, yeah, what all God was able to do over some hot meals in Turkey.
Speaker 1:Well, carl, thanks so much for your time. I know you're a busy man and it's hard to find time where you're not out in the field. So thanks for taking your hard-earned time at home to talk with us today. Of course, folks, as Carl continues to go and lead this global team across the world, I ask you to join in prayer with us for this team, for the impact that they're able to have as they step out into natural disaster, to war zones, to famine, to strife and to pain, that they would be the hands and feet of Jesus in those moments, through the simple act of handing out a hot meal. So, carl, thanks so much. Godspeed, brother, thank you.