“The yellow shirts are here!”
Members of Mt. Zion Lutheran Church in LaGrange, Indiana received a familiar welcome when they arrived for this year’s Feed My Starving Children mobile meal-packing event in Shipshewana, Indiana.
Wearing their bright yellow “God’s Work. Our Hands.” shirts, the Mt. Zion team was ready for a tradition that has become an annual expression of the congregation’s faith: packing meals for children experiencing hunger around the world.
Individual members of Mt. Zion had participated in the event in years past, but in 2018, the congregation began sending a team each year. Now, those yellow shirts have become a familiar sight.
And once the team arrives, they get to work.
Scoop, weigh, seal — and shout
The Mt. Zion crew settles around a packing table and quickly finds a rhythm.
Some scoop ingredients into bags. Others carefully weigh each package. Another volunteer heat-seals the meals before they are packed into shipping cartons.
They talk while they work. They switch jobs. They laugh — a lot.
And every time they fill a box with 36 meal packs, there is a celebration.
While other tables might shout the traditional “Woohoo!” the Mt. Zion group has its own cheer:
“Mt. Zion rocks!”
Then they start filling the next box.
It is fast-paced, hands-on work, but behind every scoop and sealed package is the knowledge that the meal will eventually reach a child who needs it. That purpose becomes even more powerful when faced with the scale of global hunger. Mt. Zion volunteers learned that one child dies from hunger every 10 to 15 seconds. Suddenly, each packed meal carries even greater weight. The need is immense, and the work matters.
Feed My Starving Children works with organizations already serving communities in countries experiencing hunger, providing them with the meals volunteers pack. During the last year, the organization provided enough meals to feed more than 1 million children one meal a day.
For the Mt. Zion volunteers, those enormous numbers make each small task at the packing table feel significant.
A scoop becomes a meal. A filled box becomes dozens of meals. And a few hours spent working together means children in another part of the world will fend off hunger for one more day.
Faith put into action
The meal-packing event is also a natural reflection of who Mt. Zion strives to be as a congregation.
Its mission statement reads: “As followers of Jesus, we are sent to joyfully share the hope of our faith, love and serve with generosity, build and nurture relationships in our local community.”
Members serve together. They strengthen relationships with one another. They give their time and energy freely. And through something as simple as packing food, they extend that spirit of love and generosity to children they will likely never meet.
There is also something powerful about doing the work side by side.
God’s work. Their hands.
Or, as Feed My Starving Children puts it, turning “hunger into hope with our own two hands.”
For Mt. Zion Lutheran Church, that happens one scoop, one box and one enthusiastic “Mt. Zion rocks!” at a time.
