Hey guys,
For those of you who DON'T know, the town we are living in now, Lenoir, is extremely impoverished, and has been hit fairly hard with the moving of production overseas. Lenoir/Hickory use to be well known for their furniture market, but when that all moved overseas, Lenoir was left impoverished. One elementary school in Lenoir is particularly impoverished, and 98% of their students are on the school lunch program. So, what happens when these kids go home for the weekend? Unfortunately, many of them DON'T GET FOOD UNTIL MONDAY!!! So, the teachers and parents at this school, called West Lenoir Elementary, came up with an alternative, once a month, they have groups of people come in and pack 400 lunches for the kids to take home with them on Fridays. It is truly eye-opening to realize that this is happening in MY backyard, kids and families are quite literally STARVING, and if it weren't for this program and others like it, these kids and families might not eat until they return to school. Tonight, 26 of us packed into the church van, and headed over to help pack these lunches, and in one half hour, that is 30 MINUTES, the 26 of us had packed over 400 lunches. It reminded me so much of my middle school days when we would go up to Feed My Starving Children, and I was hit was a crazy wave of nostalgia and all the competitions, screaming, yelling, laughing, and just JOY that happened there. You would think a bunch of bratty middle school girls and boys wouldn't really get much done at a place like this, but the way our youth group did it, was they split up friends and leaders, and pinned them against each other. All the sudden, it became this amazingly intense competition of who could pack more boxes, complete with shouts of victory after filling a box, deciding team names, of course the ever present chant of "CHICKEN--VEGGIE--SOY--RICE" until we were all convinced we would be saying it in our sleep, and just having a blast. I will never remember the ONE afternoon that we went, and we got so into it that as a group, we filled OVER 400 boxes of food. Today was just so humbling to see, while FMSC is GREAT, this is so cool because it's NOT a national organization, it is just people who really truly care about the community, doing what they can to make a difference. Things like this make me so excited, I don't know what it is, maybe it's just my love for helping others, but I just get SO pumped when I'm doing service like this, whether it's funneling rice into bags, or packing lunches, I can't help but smile. I love that our youth group is SUCH a passionate group of people, as leaders, a lot of times we end up taking a little bit of a backseat because the kids are just SO excited to serve others. Tonight was an amazing night for me, and I'd love to go back and do it again. The whole night reminded me of home, and quite honestly it's a miracle that I didn't start chanting "CHICKEN--VEGGIE--SOY--RICE" as we packed these lunches. It just reminded me of how lucky I am, I have a home, a family, and warm meals on the table every evening, I also have a family that from day 1 have taught me the importance of serving and caring for others, which prospered my own passion for others, and taught me to LOVE serving. I love being able to know that because of what our group did tonight, 100 kids will have meals EVERY weekend for the next month, THAT is cool!
<3 Always,
Rose
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