Small things with GREAT LOVE...

What a weekend we have had already! Our family was able to play a small part in our church's global outreach this weekend. In partnership with Feed My Starving Children, Nappanee Missionary Church prepared 1.2 million meals to be shipped worldwide. Here is a video from one of the local news stations talking about the effort (click here.)

Before I packed meals with my family though, I had the privilege of working with these delightful young ladies last night. No, wait...

It was these delightful young ladies. ;) I'm sure you are wondering how I ended up with this crew of beauties...

As you may know, Madeline's twelfth birthday was last month. We had promised her a slumber party, but October (not unlike other months in the Renfrow household) got a little crazy, and the sleepover was rescheduled for this weekend.

We planned on taking the girls out for a fun night and then bringing them home to chat until the wee hours, but Madeline found out that our church's youth group was reserving a block of volunteer slots for the FMSC event on Friday night, and she wanted to be involved. Our family was signed up for Saturday, but Madeline (knowing her sweet friends well) thought that her buddies would have an interest in packing meals with the effort as well. So...we reserved our places during the youth group time. (10:00pm-12:30am, oh my!)

The gals had some pizza and then we headed out for some fun....mini-golf...

...bowling....and go-carts too!

Then, about the time I'd like to go to bed, we showed up at Nappanee Missionary Church to work our shift. The girls donned their hairnets and gathered in the sanctuary with hundreds of other youth to hear about the organization, what they do, who they serve, and what our jobs were for our two hour shift.

Here are the girls gathered around one of the work stations getting the flight attendant style briefing before beginning.

Station 3!

Working hard....our mantra for the evening: Chicken. Veggies. Soy. Rice.

This young lady was very happy to seal our lovingly packaged meals for us...

At the end of the shift, the volunteers were given the opportunity to join in prayer over the boxes that had been packed. In our two hours of work, 520 boxes were packed. Each box contains 36 packages, and each package is six meals when prepared. They told us to remember the number 307. Three hundred seven is the number of children who could have one meal a day for an entire year from the meals we packed that evening.

I am so grateful to the parents of these young ladies for entrusting them to me and allowing them to participate in this event, because it was such an honor to be with them. I was so impressed, so very impressed, by their tender hearts as they learned about the vastness of the problem of hunger, and I loved to see the conviction they had as we started towards the gym on our mission. Most of all, I loved to see their joy. These girls were absolutely joyful as they served. Yes, I know they were up way past their bedtime, hanging with friends, and bopping to really loud music, but it was more than that. What we did was a very small thing. Two hours of our time is a small contribution in the grand scheme of things, but it made a difference, and the girls knew it. It made a difference for the children who would eat the meals, in the girls who packed the meals, and in the old mom who got them there too. ;) I would definitely take them all again.

Even if this is when we got in the car to make the forty minute drive home....

Happy and blessed (and maybe a little tired too),

shannon