KIDS AGAINST HUNGER – MISSION TRIP REPORT by Al Arnold
“Eat all your vegetables; there are starving children in this world!”  How many of us have been admonished by those words?  As well meaning as they may have been, they did little to instill a taste for vegetables. Nor did they help us grasp the real meaning of hunger. However, six First UMC volunteers did recently participate in an experience that brought home the hunger that 40% of Earth’s children daily endure.

“When I watched that video, the tears came to my eyes,” Dorothy Arnold confided. “The numbers are overwhelming,” added Rob Miller. It’s inconceivable that so much of the world struggles around the clock just to find something to eat. For many this hunger results in death by starvation. For others it leads to a myriad of diseases that become untreatable when the body is malnourished.  Hunger destroys the brain’s ability to function, and there is no quality of life, just a constant search for food.

In the Friday evening devotions prior to the mission team’s day of bagging the fortified rice-soy casserole for Kids Against Hunger, Rob Miller asked the question, “How do we know when God is talking to us?”  The group offered several responses, but no answer came as clearly as the view of 70 others, children as young as seven and adults as old as seventy-five, cheerfully working together to bag, weigh, seal, and box 40,000 meals on Saturday.  Seventy people + two hours + $1650.00 = 7000 people fed three meals for one day.  “For four hours work we fed 40,000 people,” is the way Roy Jeknavorian aptly stated it. 

“We in Van Wert have no concept of what it means to be hungry,” pined Susan Mathew. “Service rewards the recipients, but it also rewards the server,” commented Jana Thompson. “But even more, it strengthens the Faith of the server.”  The entire group agreed that more of our First Church Christians would enjoy and benefit from the Kids Against Hunger experience.  The sleuth has been around Jana long enough to know that the seed has been planted. Don’t be surprised when you hear that a Kids Against Hunger event has been scheduled for Van Wert, Ohio.  If God seems to be calling you to that event, you, like the adult mission team, will be overwhelmed with the Spiritual rewards.

We are working on plans to bring Kids Against Hunger to Van Wert…watch for further information.

YOUTH MISSION TRIPS IN JUNE
Middle School Mission Trip to Columbus, Ohio, June 20 – 23
Senior High Mission Trip to Columbus, Ohio, June 24—30