Works of Faith

By Shannon Hawk, Support Staff
July-September 2013

On November 7, 2012, World Gospel Mission support staff at headquarters in Marion, Indiana, had the opportunity and privilege to work out our faith alongside one of our partner churches in Nappanee, Indiana, and be part of a Feed My Starving Children MobilePack event. Nappanee Missionary Church devotes an entire week each November to expertly hosting this event. This time, over 8,000 people volunteered from their community, including both young and old and many who do not attend church. 

The work began with our group donning food service hairnets and filing into the sanctuary for a quick introduction and orientation. Feed My Starving Children staff gave us a brief but thorough training and split us into groups of different responsibilities. The day was split up into several two-hour shifts that consisted of approximately 400 volunteers broken down into 20 individual packing cells. In assembly-line fashion, our WGM cell packed meals through our first two-hour shift, ate lunch, powered through our second two-hour shift, said our goodbyes, and loaded up to head back home. We were tired, but we had a new excitement and enthusiasm from the work we had accomplished together.

What can 21 people do in a short amount of time with a specific purpose and a little organization? WGM’s cell packed 11,448 meals in those four hours, but even more impressive is that out of those two two-hour shifts with approximately 800 volunteers, 190,000 meals were packed. When the week-long Feed My Starving Children MobilePack event at Nappanee Missionary Church was finished, 2,107,296 meals were packed and loaded into trucks, ready to ship to Feed My Starving Children partners worldwide.

In November 2013, our goal is to take 60 new people from our local community to the MobilePack event at Nappanee Missionary Church so they can then go back to their circles of influence and recruit more people, and the following year we can exponentially grow the number of volunteers that we take with us.

Though numbers are impressive, success is not measured in numbers. Success is measured by the obedience and faithfulness of our hearts to our Lord and Savior and embodied in our “works” of faith.

For more information on Feed My Starving Children MobilePack events, visit www.fmsc.org/mobilepack/about. If you would like to join WGM in November 2013, contact Shannon Hawk atwgm@wgm.org.