May
12
Sending Out the Food
Last week I went with the 7th and 8th graders at our daugther’s school on a field trip to Feed My Starving Children to pack food for distribution to food aid charities in 70 countries. We were specifically packing food for the hungry in Nicaragua. FMSC has a wonderfully organized system that allows anyone from age 5 up to pack in teams for two hours. The organization stresses that you need not be Christian to pack the food nor to receive it but that they happen to be a Christian charity with a 4-star rating from Charity Navigator. We have done this with church groups and with friends visiting Chicago as a fun outing.
The image here is my favorite part of packing. When all of the food is packed and all of the utensils have been cleaned and reset for the next group, everyone who wants to gathers to pray over the food that has already been packed and will ship out later that day. They ask that we pray for three things: for the food to arrive safely, for improved health for the people who receive the food, and for more people to join them in packing more food. FMSC ships out about 20-25 million meals each month to poor countries with fragile infrastructures and occasionally to war zones. Amazingly 99.6% of the food makes it to its final destination. Fedex only manages to get 99.45% of its packages to their final destination! FMSC believes that the difference is prayer. Works for me.
yes. it's my real name. 