Local Feed My Starving Children event marks 10-year anniversary

As volunteers prepared meals during a Feed My Starving Children event hosted by La Croix Church on Friday night at the Osage Centre, their spirits were buoyed not only by the thought of feeding the global hungry, but also by the knowledge the event marked a decade of doing so.

“It’s pretty overwhelming,” said event co-director Linda Watts. “[Feed My Starving Children] sent us a graph of what has taken place in the last 10 years and we’ve packed over 7 million meals in the last 10 years.”

Through those meals, which are distributed around the world to places such as Guatemala, Haiti, Swaziland and others, the volunteers from the La Croix events have provided a year’s worth of sustenance for close to 20,000 people, many of whom are widows or orphans, Watts said.

She recalled how excited her husband, Ron — who serves as La Croix’s senior pastor — had been when he returned from a conference where he’d learned about the meal program and became inspired to start packing events in Cape Girardeau.

“He was so excited,” she said. “And I thought, ‘Oh, my gosh, this is perfect.’”

Watts said the events provide area residents the opportunity to do good without having to leave the country.

“My kids and my husband have been on mission trips but I’ve never been,” she said. “So this is exciting because I can pour my efforts into this and really make a difference.”

“It is a joyful thing to serve,” Ron Watts told the crowd of volunteers before they started the first shift of the weekend. And the volunteers, if their bouncy demeanor was any indication, agreed. As music played overhead, they laughed and shouted and some even got competitive about how quickly they could pack meals.

One volunteer, Mark Clayton, said he’d been coming to the events for six or seven years for the atmosphere and sense of accomplishment.

“It’s just something we do now for Christmas,” he said. “We started doing it with our kids to show them how it’s better to give than to receive, but now we come and do it with friends. It’s something we enjoy.”

The meals, which contain rice and soy and vitamins among other ingredients, cost about 24 cents, Linda Watts said, and are purchased through funds raised at the church during a holiday offering.

Sometimes, she said, they raise more money than what they need to purchase the food and spend the remainder on sponsoring the construction of wells in Mozambique. And as the past decade has progressed, she said the church has also begun branching out, sponsoring mobile food packs at places such as the correctional facility in Charleston, Missouri, where inmates volunteer.

The work, she said, is a true expression of commitment to the spirit of the Gospels.

“The Gospel is having a servant’s heart. Jesus came to serve and we are called to serve in the same way,” she said. “The Gospel isn’t a sedentary, do-nothing, come in and get your feel-good. It’s a call to action.”