Today was an early day for us here in Minnesota. We left Dunrovin Retreat Center at 8:00 a.m. so we could get to Feed My Starving Children before 9:30 a.m. Feed My Starving Children is a non-profit organization that packages food to send to impoverished children. There were about 45 volunteers, including the nine of us, at our 9:30-11:30 shift. We were shown a video about the work of Feed My Starving Children in Haiti and then learned about the different ingredients in the food bags they ship. Each bag had chicken flavor, dehydrated potatoes and carrots, soy, and rice. We were told that the goal for the day was to pack 15,000 bags of food, which seemed like a ridiculous amount for less than two hours of volunteering.
To start off, we split off into different stations. One person was in charge of measuring and pouring the chicken flavoring and veggies, another was in charge of the soy and rice, two people bagged and weighed the packages of food, the next person sealed the bags, and then the last person was in charge of organizing the bags and packing them in boxes. They played all sorts of good music while we worked, which really helped move the time along. We even got to practice our amazing singing and dancing while helping impoverished children, what could be better? At the end of the day we were told that each bag of food costs 17 cents to make and ship. Also we surpassed our goal by a lot. Instead of packaging 15,000 bags of food, we packaged almost 20,000 (19,872 to be exact) bags of food and that amount of food will feed 54 children for an entire year. The food we packed will be shipped to Haiti, for children there, on April 6. It was an amazing experience and we all had a great time. It was really awesome to be able to know exactly how the work we did would be affecting the lives of people around the world, and took our trip to the international level.
A couple of U-turns a nice lunch at a playground later, we arrived at the Breaking Free apartment to finish painting. We did some touch-ups and got to know the interior designer, Suzanne, better. When we finished, the apartment looked amazing in latte and white. I was surprised that after a little more than two days (not including our issue with the fire) we were able to completely paint two apartments. It just shows how quickly you can get things done when you work with other people and make sure to have fun with what you're doing. It's also a little sad knowing that we won't be going back to those apartments. We can just hope that the tenants like the new paint, even if it is flat instead of semi-gloss.
We returned to Dunrovin, once we finished painting at Breaking Free. Some people did homework while others enjoyed the amazing 80-degree weather by kayaking and canoeing on the river. Later, we had a nice homemade taco dinner at Dunrovin. After our wonderful dinner, we waited for the sun to set and then had built a campfire. We made s'mores and got to know each other a lot better. We talked about a mixture of topics and enjoyed the warmth of the fire, along with making up stories and hoping the scary possum that kept rustling around in the woods didn't attack us.
Members of the group at Feed My Starving Children
The meal bags we prepared.
The finished product of our group -- the boxes will be sent to Haiti next week.
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