[00:00:00] Speaker A: Looking for that sweet album art for some of your favorite songs. Want to know what Journey Hometown Journal or wanting to support the journey and help us share the hope of Christ? Maybe you just want to take the journey with you wherever you go. There's a simple way to do all of that and more. Download The My Journey FM app today. Wherever you get your app.
[00:00:18] Speaker B: For 20 years, while I worked in the hotel restaurant industry become chaos.
I was compelled to do something to help. And all I could think to do was what I had seen my grandmothers do my whole life. They fed people.
So I went and volunteered as a cook, doing the only thing I had a skill set that could help.
I worked for two weeks as hard as I could, and I got home and I began to reflect on what I had seen.
And I became disturbed by the quality of food that I saw served. It wasn't professionally done. There was no passion in it. It wasn't prepared in a way that met standards of sanitation. I thought there was a better way to feed people that had lost everything.
[00:01:06] Speaker C: Welcome to the Hometown Journal. I'm Mark Edwards. The voice we just heard is Gary LeBlanc. Gary and his wife Ann are the founders of Mercy Chefs, based in Portsmouth, Virginia. Mercy Chefs is a nonprofit humanitarian relief organization providing hot meals to areas hit by natural disasters.
Gary, welcome. Thank you for being with us. We just heard a small portion of how Mercy Chefs began, but give us more of the story and why you had a dessert desire to provide hot food for people facing horrible situations in natural disasters.
[00:01:44] Speaker D: Yeah. Well, thanks for having me on today. You know, it's been such an exciting adventure that could only be ordained. I started in the hotel restaurant business as a busboy and a dishwasher and just sort of worked my way up. I worked with some great families in New Orleans while I was going to school and just stuck. I love the industry.
I love the hospitality portion. I love that something's new every day.
And I love to build things. I love to create and vision. And those were all things that I think the Lord for the first 50 years of my life was preparing me for Mercy Chefs with. And then I was in Virginia. I was actually managing director for a Hilton hotel group when Katrina hit New Orleans.
And volunteering down there with other organizations was very impactful, but also very startling. As I looked at the food being served, I just knew that there was a better way to serve people. I believe with all my heart you could do high volume and high quality at the same time. You didn't have to sacrifice one for the other.
And that almost anger I had with what I saw served to the people along the Gulf coast and in New Orleans after Katrina was what led me to start Mercy Chefs. And it has been a wild ride.
[00:03:15] Speaker C: Well, it's an amazing work and to see how God has used your abilities, your passion for the service industry to reach people. So tell us a little bit about how the process works. We've got, I know the tornadoes going on right now, and I want to give you an opportunity to talk about the work that you're currently doing. But how does the process work as far as the food preparation and then getting it to those disaster emergency areas?
[00:03:45] Speaker D: Well, we have some of the best chefs in the country that work with us. These are incredibly talented men and women and at the top of their game and they work so hard. We work out of mobile kitchens. They're purpose built kitchens. We don't just take a trailer and put some kitchen equipment in it. We actually will design the kitchen first and then build a trailer around it. And these trailers are fully self contained. We have our own power, our own water filtration, constant run diesel generators, and so we can park anywhere with no resources and get started cooking. We bring in food from suppliers all across the country. We buy our own food because a high quality meal has to start with high quality ingredients and we just start putting it out. It's this traveling circus almost that spills out into a parking lot and we make things happen.
In terms of distribution, we will serve on site. We love to set up a hospitality tent when we can and have people eat in a congregant sort of environment.
We also do a lot of bulk distribution because we can always out serve the site that we're on. So we'll pick churches around where we're located and we'll send bulk food to them and actually make them distribution points as well where they can plate food and have that moment.
That moment is so important to connect with the people that they're serving. So it's a hub and spoke model and we get a lot of food out.
[00:05:22] Speaker C: That is Gary LeBlanc, the founder of Mercy Chefs. They have a team currently in the Midwest preparing and serving hot meals to the victims of the tornadoes that we have seen hit that area in recent days. We'll talk more with Gary after the break. To learn more about their organization, visit Mercy Chefs.
[00:05:40] Speaker A: Looking for that sweet album art for some of your favorite songs? Want to know what music played recently or wanting to support the journey and help us share the hope of Christ? Maybe you just want to take the journey with you wherever you go. There's a simple way to do all of that and more. Download the MyJourney FM app today, wherever you get your apps. Now back to more of the Journey Hometown Journal.
[00:06:01] Speaker C: Welcome back. Mark Edwards with you along with our guest, Gary LeBlanc. Gary and his wife Ann are the founders of Mercy Chefs. That's an organization on site in areas hit by disasters or emergencies, and they prepare and serve hot food. Gary, you were telling us before the break about this army of chefs and workers and volunteers that make this possible. How do the chefs first get connected with the organization?
[00:06:29] Speaker D: Well, most of the chefs that are on staff now start as volunteers. They'll volunteer with us for a year or two and we make sure that they catch the mission and the passion and that they can carry the DNA and vision of Mercy Chefs and then we bring them on staff. But anybody that even if you don't have a culinary background and you want to volunteer with us, just all you have to do is go to the website. There are volunteer links on there. There are info links that you can get more information or reach out just to talk about maybe what their mission or their passion is. We love to see people just birthed into ministry through food.
[00:07:11] Speaker C: Let's talk a little bit about what's happening this week. The tornadoes that have affected a large portion of the Midwest. You're actually, as we're recording this, you're actually in St. Louis doing some work. So tell us about the work that's going on in that area and what Mercy Chefs is doing.
[00:07:30] Speaker D: Yeah, I've been in London, Kentucky and actually flew into St. Louis yesterday to join our team here. But this multi state, multi tornado outbreak has been the biggest that we've seen in about a decade.
It just has left incredible damage all across the country. So many people have been affected and impacted.
In London, we're working with a great church. We're actually in the debris fields handing out food daily.
And here in St. Louis, we brought in another piece of equipment and we've set up in the heart of the neighborhood that was impacted. There are 5,000 homes here that have varying degrees of damage from part of the roof gone to all the roof gone. 5,000 homes. And this is probably in the most at risk community in St. Louis. The people that could afford it least have taken the hardest hit. It's going to be years for this part of St. Louis to recover. And so again, we're just doing meals. We're creating moments of service. We're supporting other volunteer teams.
And, yeah, it's just we're all over the place.
[00:08:40] Speaker C: I would imagine the impact that it has on the staff that goes into one of these areas and to be able to provide food, food that is, as you mentioned, well prepared and it's not just shipped in from somewhere. Talk a little bit about that. The impact that you have seen over the years that Mercy Chefs has on a community.
[00:09:07] Speaker D: Yeah, I'm constantly amazed, you know, as a chef in a career, you know, it's just. It's food on a plate. You know, it's not really anything that special. But when we do it in these environments and when we do it for the Lord, you know, consecrated, amazing things happen over that shared meal.
We see people contemplate their circumstance for the first time.
We're able to provide a moment of hope, a moment of grace, a moment of peace in the midst of turmoil where people can begin to put their lives back on track. It's an incredible opportunity. So much can happen over a plate of food.
We always talk internally about it's our job to set the Lord's table of hospitality and then let's just watch what he does with that. But we're the workers. We've got to get in there and get that part of it done. Just an incredible opportunity. I mean, from Virginia to the world, we always say we have teams all around the globe.
We'll do 3 million meals this year globally. Besides our work here domestically, we're in some of the hardest places. We're touching unreached people groups. We're seeing miracles happen.
I don't want to minimize it, but we see food evangelism happening. There is a way to spread the gospel with the simplest form of a meal on a plate.
It is such an incredible opportunity, and we're so honored to be able to go and do that.
[00:10:42] Speaker C: Today on the Hometown Journal, we are sharing the outreach of nonprofit organization Mercy Chefs. We'll have more with the founder Gary LeBlanc in a minute. If you would like to learn more about their work or perhaps find out about volunteering, visit mercychefs.com it's good for your family.
[00:10:59] Speaker D: That's a big thing, too. Oh, yeah. I have kids.
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Now back to more of the Journey Hometown Journal.
[00:11:19] Speaker C: Welcome back. Our guest is Gary Leblanc the founder of Mercy Chefs. The organization works around the world, providing communities hit by disasters or emergencies with prepared hot meals. They have served more than 28 million meals in the past 18 years. When you went into that very first area for the very first time and served meals, did you ever envision that your outreach, your ministry, would be what it is today?
[00:11:47] Speaker D: I had no idea.
I thought if I could get a barbecue grill and igloo on the back of a pickup truck, I'd be really getting it.
And if I take all my natural ability, all my creative ability, anything I could ever hope to think, or do, we surpass that by year two or year three, and we're in our 19th year now, everything, everything has been miraculous and is God ordained. I tell people all the time, if it's bigger than you and smarter than you and better than you, you better never say it was you.
So this, this is all God. It's. It's just been incredible to see what he'll do with obedience. If you just say yes and follow his instructions, he can do amazing things.
[00:12:41] Speaker C: Today on the Hometown Journal, we have been talking with Gary LeBlanc. Gary, along with his wife Ann, founded Mercy Chefs, based in Portsmouth. To learn more about their work in emergency and disaster areas providing prepared hot meals, visit mercychefs.com I'm Mark Edwards. Thank you for joining us for the Hometown Journal.
[00:13:00] Speaker A: You've been listening to the Journey Hometown Journal. If you're a part of an organization or know of one in the communities we serve and would like to be considered as a guest, please make your
[email protected] email officeyjourneyfm.com or call 800-424-9594. The Hometown Journal is a presentation of the Journey.
