85,000 Meals for Haiti

 

 

 

 

Eighty Five Thousand meals for Haiti? Where did they come from and how did we do it? Northland A Church Distributed is a very generous church and so are its members. Last weekend and this one, Northland partnered with an organization called Kids Against Hunger. This was only one of four projects taking place simultaneously. The other three were off site at area churches and food banks, since donations have been overwhelming and volunteers are needed everywhere. God is good! People are good, too!

We were set up with 14 people to a table (actually about three tables in a long line) with the first four people facing each other with bins containing soy, vitamin powder, seasoning, dehydrated vegetables, and rice which were funneled into plastic bags. Each meal had to weigh more or less 390 to 400 grams and when cooked can feed up to a family of four. Once each package was weighed it had to be handed over to be sealed and then packaged in boxes. We ran out of supplies before we could hit the 100,000 mark, but we got close.

In the packaging, the tricky part was not going under and not going over. Since we knew that the people receiving these meals are often going hungry, we tried to get as much as we could in each bag without going over. Most of our packages weighed 398 to 400 grams. I would know since we had two people weighing packages and I was one of them. Time went by so fast.

It went by so fast because, I was around the nicest people which made the work light. There was Kim, a nurse at Florida Hospital, and her husband, Ken with their daughter, a high school student. Kim kept us entertained with conversations about things in the news ranging from all the hoopla over Tim Tebow's positive pro-life ad for the Super Bowl to where we all worked, etc. On the other hand, Ken, was competitive, and kept us informed as to how we were beating all the other tables in packaging. He also teased us that the camera crew was nearby and we were all wearing these silly head nets. You can imagine. In spite of all this laughter and banter, we ran our table like a fine tuned engine.

Kim's mom and dad were also there, and he had been an usher at Lyman High School, where Northland used to meet off site when NCC was meeting at the Rink, and we conversed about that, too. Since Northland built the new sanctuary, Lyman worship closed down. They said, " we miss Lyman," and I can understand; it was a cozier worship community. But we can't have everything, can we? Today's commission might have made up for it, even just a little.

Being at the Rink brought back so many precious memories of God working some wonderful things in our lives. He did it again today. Time just flew by and I couldn't be more satisfied.

* Maybe you can make it a community effort to package some meals as several churches in the community gather to do an event like this. It is so doable. Contact Kids Against Hunger Make it happen.