"Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God." Matthew 4:4
Several months ago, I read the book "When Helping Hurts." This book is truly a must read for anyone who is serious about mission work and wants to live a mission-focused life helping those who live in poverty. Over and over in the Gospel, Jesus commands Christians to extend our hands to the poor, but many modern-day Christians scratch our heads because we simply don't know how. Other than handing money to a homeless person on the street, how can we truly help the poor?
The authors of "When Helping Hurts" go to great lengths to demonstrate that povery is not just about being broke. Poverty is about "broken-ness." Broken trust, broken relationships, broken finances, broken dreams and broken lives. If we truly want to help those living in poverty and bring them to Jesus, we can't just show up and hand out money. We must first identify what is broken in our own lives and talk about how Jesus helped us heal. Helping those living in poverty means we first have to come to terms with our own broken-ness and relate how Jesus changed our lives. By sharing our stories, then we may be able to share the love of Jesus with those in need around us. Sure, it helps if we take care of their pressing physical needs first, and that's what Mission Athens is all about, but we also have to take care of spiritual needs. There may be no better way to do that than to share our testimony of times in our lives when God took care of us in a similar circumstance.
One of the points in the book that hit home with me the most was this one. Through our Mission Athens work, I have had many "AHA" moments that have truly changed my life for the better, and I know that others on our Mission Athens team feel the same way. That feeling of God working in our lives is one of the reasons I started this blog, to share those stories with all of you and share the lessons we are all learning together.
I have been able to relate to being cold, to not having enough money to pay the bills, to burying a loved one, to praying over a sick child, and to needing help getting a little further down the road. Throughout my life, I have had moments when I have been down on my luck, frustrated, broke, sad, lonely, and stuck in the darkness of grief. But, this week as we prepare for our second night of congregational service at Central, I was struck with a plain, simple truth:
I have never been hungry.
Usually, I start these blog posts relating an experience that I have had and how I tied that experience in some way to the Mission Athens case we were working on that week. I have been able to relate my own broken life to the broken lives we are trying to help, and I have been able to see how God has played a huge role in making me whole again with the hopes that He will do that for our Mission Athens cases. But not this week.
I have never been hungry.
Some of my friends who are reading this blog may laugh and say, "You are always hungry!" It is true--I do love to eat. But waking up and thinking about what's for breakfast, what's for lunch, and where can we go out to eat for dinner are not the same things as being hungry.
My entire life, I have been blessed with plenty of food. I can never remember a time when we did not have a stocked pantry or refrigerator or when we did not have not just one, but several options for each meal. All week, I have been racking my brain, trying to remember a time when I was hungry so I could write about it in this blog and relate in some small way to the plans that we have for our night of service. But the cold, hard fact is:
I have never been hungry.
The only time I remember being stressed out about food doesn't really count, because I am blessed with a loving family. When my husband and I got married, our family told us we were too young, and we didn't have enough money. They were right on both counts, but we got married anyway, planning as most young people do to live on love. That didn't really work out, and we were trying so hard to make our small budget work. I remember my first trip to the grocery store as a married woman just like it was yesterday. I planned our meals and went to Foodland. When the clerk said the total was $50, I almost fainted, but I paid her, and I planned to stretch that food as far as it would go.
Stuart and I came home from a trip to see my parents only to find that our power had gone out and all the food from that shopping trip had spoiled. I sat down and started crying. What were we going to do? I called my sweet grandmother, and my grandparents fed us for a week until we could make it to our next paycheck.
See? I have never been hungry.
Unfortunately, there are 17 million children in the United States today who live in food insecure households. As the unemployment numbers continue to rise, more and more moms and dads do not have enough money to buy enough food for their families. Grocery prices have risen at a steep rate over the past few years, and there simply is not enough money to make ends meet in many families. That means that more and more children are relying on their free and reduced breakfasts and lunches at school to sustain them.
But, what about the weekends?
Many children go home to little or no food on the weekends. They know the feeling of being hungry--they live with it each and every day. It may be the first thing they think about when they wake up and the last thing they think about before they go to bed.
I have never been hungry, but they are hungry every day.
On Sunday, March 4, Central Church of Christ will host a Night of Service. During that evening, we will assemble bags of food for these kids to take home on the weekends as part of a local initiative called The Full Tummy Project. You can learn more about Full Tummy by visiting their website at http://www.fulltummyproject.org/.
The Full Tummy Project currently supports several elementary schools in the Athens, AL community by placing bags of food in kids' backpacks each Friday afternoon so that they have something to eat over the weekend. The children are selected for the program by their schools' teachers and administrators, and the bags are placed in backpacks when the children are at recess, so it is all very discreet for the kids involved.
We are asking everyone to participate in donating items for these bags. I am hosting a donation drive at my workplace, and I encourage all of you to do the same thing sometime this month. Let's pray that we can collect as much food as possible and make a big difference for these hungry kids.
Please bring your food donations to Central Church of Christ on Sunday morning, March 4. The Mission Athens team will work that afternoon to get all the donations organized. Then, that evening, the entire congregation will work together to "Pack and Pray" over each Full Tummy bag.
Because we need each bag to be consistent, it is very important to follow this list of food very specifically. Thank you in advance for your help in making this night of service a great one! We can't wait to see what a difference we all can make when we work together.
Here is the list of items that are needed:
REMEMBER: Items MUST be in single serve packaging, easy to open, and ready to eat without any preparation. We are unaware of conditions at home (microwave availability and/or adult supervision). Please send only 100% Juice boxes.
Breakfast ideas
Individual boxes of cereal
Cereal/breakfast bars
Ready to eat oatmeal with fruit cups (usually found on aisle with applesauce)
Pop Tarts
: Lunch Ideas
Vienna Sausages
Peanut butter/cheese crackers
: Dinner Ideas
Chef Boyardee Pop-Top meals such as ravioli, spaghetti, chicken and rice, etc.
Spaghetti-Os (pop-top only)
Ready to eat soups (pop-top only, not condensed)
Beannee Weenees
Ready to eat rice cups
: Snack Ideas
Fruit cups/ applesauce cups
Raisins or any other individually packaged dried fruit
Trail mix or nuts
Granola bars
Fruit chews
Single serve packs of crackers (ie. Goldfish, wheat thins, teddy grahams, etc) :
