Feed the Hunger

Earlier this year, our church held a love offering to raise money to provide meals to needy children who attend a school in Kenya where our church regularly sends missions teams and offers various means of support.  The goal for the fund raiser was to provide 150,000 meals, but our church family raised enough money to provide over 300,000 meals.

Last weekend, our church partnered with Feed the Hunger (a New Directions ministry) to host a  packathon where volunteers assembled all of those nutrition packed meals.  That weekend, 302,000 meals were packed and shipped to Kenya.  In addition, several hundred pairs of shoes were also collected as gifts for the children.

I was looking forward to having our entire family there to help pack meals, but after three weeks of excitement and travel, our daughter ended up with a stomach bug, so only my boy and I were able to go pack meals that day.

She was sick, and he was tired.

We had a fabulous time packing meals together while singing and dancing to the uplifting music.  My boy became known as the venerable veggie master as he scooped dried vegetables with great enthusiasm.  He worked between a community group friend and some friends I met at work when I first moved back to the area almost 12 years ago.  It was great watching their young son work so hard beside my boy as they both learned the joy of serving others.

Don't we look cute in our stylish hair nets to meet FDA food handling guidelines?

Here is a video that New Directions International shared with our church family: