"Stop Hunger Now" Packing Day

Remember the international hunger-relief organization that Elisabeth was raising money for several weeks ago?

(By the way, her total ended up being $392.75...which equals 1,571 meals!)

Well, today was where the rubber met the road...the actual Meal Packing Day.

Short Version:

Take some ingredients.

O.k., lots and lots of ingredients.

Seriously...lots.

And then, add lots of ready-and-willing-to-serve people

= lots of meals packaged today!

Longer version:

Anna from our Love the Least Ministry team heard of this awesome ministry that is helping to serve the world's hungry.

Love the Least team (L to R: Me, Amy, Brenda, Anna, Kami)

So Anna brought the idea to our Love The Least team several months ago. We ran with it. Seven local churches ended up coming together - providing people and money - to make today happen.

To pack the meals, we had 5-person teams surrounding funnels:

First into each bag went a packet of vitamins:

(I'm multi-tasking - putting vitamin packs into bags AND talking with Anna, apparently about something very serious)

Next, a scoop of soy flour went into the bags:

After the soy flour, a scoop of dehydrated veggies and seasonings went into the mix:

Finally, a scoop of long-grain rice went on top:

After the bags were full, "runners" took over.

The runners took bins full of 5 or 6 bags...

...over to the "weighers" and "sealers" tables.


The "weighers" would - you guessed it - weigh the bags.

If the bags weighed a little over the correct amount, they would take out a little rice.

And conversely, if the bag was a little under-weight, they would add a little rice.

Then the bags were sealed by hot little machines and passed to the next tables...

...where they were stacked up and then loaded into boxes.

Then the boxes were taped up...

and loaded onto pallets and shrink-wrapped...ready to be shipped and delivered!

We needed to commit to a minimum of 10,000 meals to get Stop Hunger Now to come to our town. We thought it would be oh-so-neat to reach 20,000 meals.

Enough money was raised over the past month that today we were able to package over 70,000 meals!

Only God...

Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen. (Eph 3:20-21)