Feed My Starving Children

So last night Travis and I had a fun time with each of our D-groups (discipleship small groups). He leads a group of 7th grade boys and I co-lead a group of 8th grade girls. We took our groups out for dinner and then on to a church in the area to participate in an incredible service project. Feed My Starving Children is a local ministry that began in Minnesota and is headquartered here. By creating dried food packages, they are literally helping to feed the world. Some Minnesota scientists created the individually packaged, nourishing meals by combining specific amounts of soy, rice, dried vegetables, vitamins, and minerals. Feed My Starving Children volunteers package and send over 40 million meals a year to more than 50 countries all over the world. We got introduced to this ministry by people at our Church who told us about it. It's a twin cities favorite and something lots of groups can do together.

A great church in Edina is currently hosting their second annual Feed My Starving Children drive, attempting to package 1 million meals this week! They ask people from their Church and the community to sign up for a shift and help them reach their goal. We participated last year and loved it, so we signed up again this year. We chose the 9:30-11:30pm shift and brought our d-groups with us to spend some time serving together. It was a blast! For 2 hours we were packaging as many meals as we could, laughing and singing to the GREAT mix of music they were blasting! What I love the most about it is, after you are done, they give you all the "stats" about what you just did and then you pray over the boxes that are being sent and the food that will hopefully nourish another life somewhere in the world. So powerful and such a great tangible example for all of us to see what compassion in action looks like.

In those 2 hours last night, we packaged more than 62,000 meals (almost 500 per person) which will feed 171 kids for a year! That brought the total to 862, 000 meals for the week so far, but with the shifts still going all day today, they were anticipating a grand total of 1.25 million meals!! Amazing and totally worth it. Although this ministry is headquartered here, they have mobile stations that go all over the country. If you're ever looking for an incredible service project for your Church or students to do, consider this one...it will leave quite an impact on anyone who participates!