This is the second in a four-part series from our experience in Haiti with Feed My Starving Children.
In our first post, we talked about the importance of connection and relationships. Showing up for kids matters, and connecting kids to adults who know Jesus matters.
While I was in Haiti, I had the privilege of participating in life-giving work.
When our church participates in a MobilePack event, it’s easy to become centered on ourselves.
How many volunteers did we have at the event?
How many boxes did we pack?
Who am I going to pack with?
Then you get a once in a lifetime opportunity like I had to visit the kids who receive the food. And for both sides, I can tell you it’s life-giving.
Real Hope for Haiti
One of the FMSC partners in Haiti is Real Hope for Haiti. Real Hope for Haiti is run by Zach and Lorraine and includes a malnutrition clinic, a medical clinic, a cholera center.
I immediately picked up a boy named McKinley. If I had guessed his age, I would have said he was seven months old.
McKinley is three.
McKinley was severely under size, had discolored hair (a sign of malnutrition), and was weak. He held tight to my body, settled in, and eventually went to sleep.
See McKinley was not only needing food, as he arrived at the malnutrition clinic in need of help. He was also starving for love. The workers do their best to meet the basic needs of so many kids in the clinic. But with 70-80 kids at any one time, they can’t sit and hold and rock every child for pleasure all day.
And I will tell you it was pure joy to sit and a hold a baby who wanted so desperately to be held. For hours.
The kids brought to this clinic are malnourished. They may stay for months or a year or more. And every day they receive three meals of MannaPack Rice because of volunteers. Because volunteers in the US said, “I will fund and pack MannaPack to feed starving children.”
What you do matters. What a volunteer does for FMSC is life-giving. It is literally giving life to children around the world who otherwise would starve to death.
What a volunteer does matters.
I recently had a parent tell me she had a one-on-one overnight trip with her middle school daughter.
It’s been several years since the daughter moved out of Kids Ministry. The mom asked her daughter, “if you needed to talk to someone and you couldn’t talk to me, who would you go to?”
Without missing a beat, this kid named her elementary small group leader and her elementary kid’s minister.
The parent was touched because the kid didn’t struggle to come up with one name. The kid knew who loved and cared about her.
Life-giving.
When you show up for kids.
When you give kids your time.
It matters.
It is life-giving to get involved in the life of kids and students.
