February Service Project

Stop Hunger Now

On Friday night, we had the awesome experience of serving together as a family.  I have a hard time finding hands-on serving opportunities for families with young kids (7 and 8 yrs old).  Fortunately, we were able to be a part of a family service project at a church that we've been attending.  The church matched the offerings of the 1st - 5th graders to purchase the ingredients for the meals.  We were quite surprised (and a little skeptical) when the representative from Stop Hunger Now told us that we would be putting together 20,000 meals that evening.  Did he not see that the room was full of 1st - 5th graders and their parents?  And it looked like there were more 1st graders than 5th graders.

Before we began our meal making endeavor, we got to put on these beautiful hair nets.  Michael purposely put himself in this pic, I think that he enjoyed sporting the fashion statement.

The girls and I worked at a bagging station with another mom and her two children.  We put a scoop of soy protein then dried vegetables then powdered vitamin and lastly rice in each bag.  They had to go in that order.  The other mom and I pretty much just stood back and supervised.  Even though our little group was comprised of a kindergartner, a 1st grader, a 2nd grader and a third grader, the girls were able to fill the bags themselves.  It was such a great opportunity for the girls to serve through hands on "work".

Michael was part of the "man" crew.  He got to tote around 50lb bags rice and soy protein.

Here's Bradey putting in her scoop...

...and Ramsey putting in hers.

They would hit a gong for every 1000 meal bags we completed.  We would all cheer and then get back to work :)  When we ran out of bags, we had put together 20,154 meals!!!  Each meal will feed a family of 6, and that meal may very well be the only one that have that day.  We were told that over 1 billion people in the world suffer from hunger.  25,000 people die of hunger every day.  That's 1 every 3 seconds.  Or, the equivalent of 120 jumbo jets crashing EVERY DAY!  If 120 jumbo jets were crashing every day there would be a deafening outcry to stop the tragedy!  Yet 25,000 people - men, women and children - die every day in a world that produces enough food to feed every inhabitant of it 4 lbs of food, every day.

To learn more about Stop Hunger Now, go to their website at http://www.stophungernow.org/

Our family was blessed by this experience and I pray that every person that is fed by a meal that we prepared will be blessed beyond measure!