Modern-day loaves-and-fishes miracle reported

A Denver-based Christian ministry claims it witnessed a modern-day loaves-and-and-fishes miracle in Egypt where the 3,500 Kentucky Fried Chicken meals it ordered for conference attendees served more than 5,000 and produced leftovers.

The incident was reported by Charisma Magazine and described on a YouTube video about the trip.

According to Marilyn Hickey, 77, whose ministry organized the meetings in conjunction with the Egyptian Evangelical Association, 3,500 boxed-lunches from KFC were ordered and accounted for, said the Charisma report.

"There were tickets distributed for the lunches," Hickey said. "The boxes were given out, leaving none in the room."

But after the food was gone, the crowd swelled to about 5,000, and volunteers returned to the room and were "astonished" to discover 1,200 more lunches.

Hickey reported that after the lunches were handed out, another 1,200 appeared in the room, "leaving a surplus of food and dumbfounded witnesses," Charisma reported.

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Hickey's staff called the incident during the recent Egypt trip a "loaves and fishes" miracle, the report said, after Jesus' miracle in the New Testament in which a small boy's lunch of loaves and fishes fed thousands.

Hickey told the publication she feels confident in proclaiming the event as a miracle because independent Egyptian and non-Christian sources verified the unexplained appearance of the lunches.

"It happened in such a way that [my ministry] was not at all associated with it, which left local volunteers and non-Christians marveling at what had happened," she told Charisma.

Hickey's trip included a series of ministry outreaches and teaching events, including a women's conference attended by more than 1,000. She said another highlight was her visit to a work launched by Father Samaan, a Coptic Christian whose outreach targeted a Cairo slum called Garbage City.

Hickey's ministry, based in a Denver suburb, has worked on gospel projects in dozens of nations during her four decades in ministry. She and her daughter, Sarah Bowling, have a television program called "Today with Marilyn and Sarah" and have plans for an outreach to India in the fall, Charisma said.

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