Hunger: Impact Accomplished!

Food Drive stats:
In just one day, St. Andrew's collected over 7,500 pounds of food to restock the local food shelves.

What does 1,182 mean to anyone? Is it a famous year in history? A monthly mortgage payment? Nope! It is how many children will not starve because of the efforts of churches and organizations in the Stillwater area. For four days in February, over 1,500 volunteers packed 431,548 meals that will serve 1,182 children a daily meal for a year. The response from St. Andrew's was overwhelming. The sessions filled so quickly we had waiting lists for several of them. Through a generous donation from a local family, we were able to waive the $20 packing fee for our volunteers, which allowed even more people to participate. In addition, each session gave their own donations to help pay those additional costs of shipping to foreign countries. A special thank you to Steve Bachman for arranging for the fork lift - there is no way to lift 2,000 pound bags of rice without one! Next year, the organizers have challenged the community to make up one million meals. Based on the excitement from the volunteers, especially our youth, I think we can do it!

"I love helping at Feed My Starving Children! It is such a well run program - that really tries to tackle the problem of hunger -not just with heart and money, but with a well thought out plan, scientifically based, and encouraging tons of people in our communities to reach out and show God's love for all His children around the world. My Mom always said, "Many hands make light work". To know that in two hours, the people in that room packed enough food to feed 59 kids for an entire YEAR…is very gratifying. AND we had a blast doing it!" ~ Nancy Varberg

"Personally, I enjoyed doing FMSC very much. It was so cool seeing all that you could do with just a little bit of money. It doesn't cost a lot which I thought was kind of strange. We packed 93 bags and that fed 55 children for a full year! Amazing! I also loved that they prayed over each of the boxes before they sent it off. Our leader told us it was so hard to get the food over there, it was miracle every time it made it into the country without being broken into or anything. Praise the Lord for that! In short, that was one of my favorite service events I've ever done." ~ Celine Murray

"FMSC is truly a testament to how little it takes to make a big difference. Just during the shift that we were a part of, we packed an incredible amount of food. To know how powerful an impact it could have on the kids overseas was awe-inspiring: 15 cents a meal! It is a terrific way to help others, not only physically, but spiritually as well." ~ Matisse Murray

"Before going to FMSC I really took the food that we have today for granted. I always thought, everyone has food, what's the big deal about this, but when I saw the prep video (before starting to pack the food) and I saw the kids who were like 6 and you could see right through their skin all of their skeletal system, that just broke my heart. As I was watching and I saw the kids from Haiti so happy because they had a plate of rice I was like Wow, these kids really never see food because they are so excited for just a meal which we sometimes have about 3 or more a day and full as in included dessert, protein, carbs, veggies, fruits etc. The video really made me feel grateful over the food that we have and it just gave me a boost of energy to get to work. I shedded some tears as I watched it [the video] because it's really sad to think that we have more than enough food and they have enough food to feed a child once every 3-5 days resulting about 18,000 deaths a day!!! That's an insanely high number. It's nice to know, though, that with the help of FMSC the number has gone down from 40,000 to 18,000. The whole project itself was also very fun. It's nice to know that you can have such a good time with friends and that you are impacting so many lives. By the end of our shift, we had packed enough food to feed 50 kids one meal a day for one full year. I thought that was pretty amazing the huge impact you can do leaving your house 15 min. away from the warehouse and impacting lives that are thousands of miles away." ~ Gabriela Ruiz