We participated in a wonderful event on Saturday. Initiated by Dan Johnson at the Hilmar Covenant Church, hundreds of people from the surrounding communities, irrespective of age, religion, or other distinctions, joined in a massive food packing endeavor, aimed at feeding hungry children. Working together under the direction of the “Feed My Hungry Children” organization, we followed FDA rules with caps and clean hands and proceeded to measure and bag and weigh and seal meals and pack them in boxes. These boxes of healthy rice/soy/veggie/vitamin meals will be shipped to children in crisis.
In our lifelong work in Africa Roy and I have been very focused on helping people establish food security, and have long been proponents of the old saw “give a man a fish and you’ll feed him today, teach a man to fish and you’ll help him be fed for a lifetime”, but there are always immediate needs. If you try to teach a hungry person anything, without first feeding them, your teaching may just be in vain. If you try to just use words to tell a hungry person about God’s love but don’t give them anything to eat, your words will most likely just fall unheard. We firmly believe that we need to follow Jesus’ example of paying attention to the whole person – body, mind, and soul.
The next day we shared at the Hilmar Covenant Church, and we were blessed by the music! One song in particular had an African feel to it, and this young man is an expert at playing this “djembe” drum!
