Compassion and Justice

On Saturday March 26, I participated in a service opportunity that I had never done before. Each year at my church, everyone participates in what is called Celebration of Hope. This celebration is three weeks long. One of the aspects of Celebration of Hope is the 5 day challenge. With this challenge, for five days the members of the church eat as millions of the poorest people in the world do everyday, on less than two dollars. You are supposed to eat a small portion of oatmeal for breakfast and a cup of rice and beans for lunch and dinner. During my serve, I came to church from 9:00am until 3:00pm and helped pack canvas bags with rice, beans and oatmeal. These bags will later be given out to the church attendees, so they will have the correct amounts of the food they need to complete the 5 day challenge. Each bag contained enough food to last a family of 4 for one day, and it was hardly anything compared to what we eat everyday. All together the group I worked with packed only about 4800 bags, that was only a small dent however in the tens of  thousands that needed to be packed. It was a cool experience to be able to work behind the scenes in an effort to help the members of the church see how fortunate we all are in all the food we have. This would hopefully in turn give them the compassion to participate in the other aspects of Celebration of Hope, which are giving so that the church can help the local and global community, and helping pack 50,000 seeds packs so that people living in poverty can grow a garden in order to receive an income and food for their families. This time of year always makes me excited to see all the people at my church come together with love for people we don't even know, but we are passionate about them receiving justice.