Feed My Starving Children

On Saturday we got to serve with lots of our friends from our Life Group class by putting together meals for hungry kids.  It's through the Christian corporation "Feed My Starving Children" and TONS of people from our community come together to help serve (in our shift of over 200 people there were people from lots of different churches, SEMO football players, business people, etc.).  This year it was in the Osage Center.  Everyone signs up to work a 2-hour shift.  You put together "manna packs" which have rice, soy protein, dried veggies, and chicken flavoring.  It's kind of an assembly line process and it is AMAZING how many meal-packs you can put together in two hours.  Not only does it help provide meals to starving children all over the world, it is LOTS of fun!

To get us in the "mood" (or rather to just be thankful for all the food we have to eat and to really think
about what some people have to eat all the time) we ate rice and beans for lunch before we headed to
 help.  For some starving children, the rice packs we make are their only source of food.  I can't imagine
what it would be like to just eat rice everyday.  But I know we need to be SO thankful for how blessed we are
in America!

Heading to the Osage Center to start packing meals...

The corporation goes all over the United States using volunteers to pack literally MILLIONS of meals.  They have a really strict way of doing it, measuring the food, weighing it, sealing it, etc. But it works SO WELL and makes the process go so smoothly.  Here is an instructor showing how to measure and pack the meals.  Oh and do you see our awesome hair-nets!  HAHA!  According to Jimmy Wilferth "hair-nets can be sexy!  You just have to be packing meals for starving children to make them look good!"  HA!

Then we started packing our meals.  You work in groups of like 6-10.  The Greene's and Witvoet's kids worked with us, and it's so neat to see the kids working and serving.  I think it will be so neat when Brynn is old enough to help with stuff like this!

Sweet Emma was the flower girl in our wedding 5 years ago!  Now she's 8!

Here's part of our team...don't we look good!  HA!

Ryan was part of the "warehouse" crew (basically the more muscular men) who carried around boxes of rice to refill stations and picked up all the finished boxes.  I asked him to go around and take some pictures of people in our class "in action."  I'm sure they are going to love me for all these hair-net pics!  HA!

Alex and Meredith looking good...

Jimmy has taken these packets to Swaziland with his organization "Heart for Africa."
They have seen people literally cry because they are so excited to receive these meals!

Mark and Mason Mayhew sealing some of the packs...

Me and Emily

Lynwood peeps...we all were kind of split up and working at tables all over the place.

Heather, Marlee, and me.

At the end of our session they counted the boxes and everyone together had packed enough for 76,000 meals!  AMAZING!  By the end of their two days in Cape I think they said their goal was to pack enough for 500,000 meals!  At the beginning of our shift we watched a video.  It said that there are 18,000 children that die everyday from starvation, while in some countries (like the US) we have an obesity epidemic.  It just really makes you think about how blessed we are to live in a place where we don't have to worry where our next meal is coming from.  Something as simple as getting together with friends and helping pack meals can truly save lives!  If you live in our area you REALLY should come do it next year...it is a great experience!