Spreading Joy and Feeding Kids

I have been blessed to have been volunteering as a youth group leader at my church at home for the last two years, and we have an absolutely amazing group of high school students who love nothing more than to serve! As a youth group, we have had a chance to pack Manna Packs with Kids Against Hunger and Feed My Starving Children (FMSC) over weekend retreats and for service events. Manna is referred to throughout the bible as an unexpected spiritual nourishment and it was also a source of physical nourishment for the Israelites in the old testament.

Psalm 78:24 "he rained down on them manna to eat, and gave them the grain of heaven."

PLC Youth Group in April 2014 after packing FMSC boxes!

PLC MS/HS youth after packing for Kids Against Hunger March 2014

Last year when I was here in Nicaragua we got to unload a semi-truck full of boxes from Feed My Starving Children and I was so excited to have the opportunity to be on the receiving end of these boxes here at Amigos for Christ in Chinandega. It was very cool to be a part of.

Walter and the boxes we unloaded in 2013

This year we packed meals in April and received a shipment of meals from FMSC last week. This was cool again having packed them so recently stateside and today, I got to experience the last link in the chain. I went out with our education team to Escuela San Martin here in Chinandega to give out boxes of meals to feed the children in that community at that school. We work with the schools here in Chinandega to feed the children when they come to school as an incentive to attend school especially for the older children after second grade.

I feel so blessed to get to not only pack meals, but unload and then distribute them into the hands of the people who will consume them and whose lives will be directly influenced and improved by the food that my youth group kids and others like ours have donated their time to do.

We unloaded a semi-full in about an hour with two assembly lines

The boxes are taller than I am!

The road to get out to the school

Such a beautiful view

La Escuela San Martin

Waiting to unload the goodies!

Some of the sweet students who will get to eat the food helping us to unload it!

All of the kids in school today (the rest were out for a field trip)

 

 

 

 

 

So blessed to see how wide her little eyes got when she realized what we were unloading was food (and school supplies

 

     

I came to Nicaragua on this trip to celebrate the wedding of my sweet friend Annie and primarily to visit with my friends and family here beforehand, I couldn't have imagined getting to see all sides to a project that I was a part of on a whim in the States. The Global Impact of the things we do in our spare time, are real and tangible. I can't wait to share this with the kids when I get back!

Matthew 25: 35-36,40

 "For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.’  

And the king will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.’"

I got to not only distribute food that will help breathe life into the kids at Escuela San Martin that hundreds of amazing volunteers packed with love, but I got to love them today and this was my own form of spiritual nourishment or manna.