Feed My Starving Children

Kieran's faith formation class (and all the ages above him) went to Feed My Starving Children a few days ago to pack food that would be sent around the world.  It's a pretty cool place with a great mission, volunteers pack food that gets sent to many countries and put in the hands of people who need it.  I had done this a few times back when I taught in Fridley, this was Kieran's first time...it's actually a lot of fun.

You start with about 20 minutes of a background - that night they told the story (with pictures) of a nine year old boy in Africa who initially weighed 19 pounds.  After seven months of eating the food delivered by FMSC, he weighed 73 pounds...that story really got Kieran thinking....

The first requirement...you need to wear hairnets...which Kieran wasn't quite fond of at the beginning...

After the introduction, you get packing food for about an hour.  Vitamins, veggies, soy and rice are packed in a bag that is easily cooked at the destination.  Everyone has their own job.  Kieran's was to add the vitamins and veggies...

To Kieran's right Dar, a close friend of my mother's who also works at our local bank in Norwood.  She's always been great with the kids when we see her so Kieran wasn't concerned a bit about working by some strange adult.  The other two at our station where Dar's daughter and granddaughter.

My role was pretty simple...seal the bags after the other four packed them (and someone else boxed the completed bags up).  I wasn't too stressed...

The goal is to prevent as many spills as possible...we weren't too good at that (I even spilled one that was handed to me because I wasn't paying attention)...

After an hour of packing food, you get back together in the meeting area and get to sample the food being sent overseas.  They also tell you how many boxes of food were packed in that one hour.  In our case, it was 87 boxes which totals 18,792 meals.  Or put another way, in one hour, our everyone in our group boxed enough food to completely feed 51 kids for a year...not bad.

If you ever get the chance to volunteer at FMSC, do it...it's cool.  Or don't wait for a large group to volunteer...do it yourself or as a family, you'll have fun doing something good....