Thousands of church volunteers to pack meals this weekend

We often see build up around pop-culture and commercial events that lead to buzz, viral posts and long lines. Popular movies create a frenzy and will sell out theaters. Black Friday deals will lure shoppers to show up in the wee hours of the morning to capture big savings.

Those things happen in Cape Girardeau, too, but there's a different type of event this weekend with a waiting list to participate.

Nearly three thousand people will show up at the Osage Centre this weekend to pack 750,000 meals for starving people across the globe.

LaCroix Church is hosting the three-day "mobile pack" event. It's the 10th year for the event. And we love how passionate people are to jump in and get involved.

The pre-packed meal contains rice, soy protein, dehydrated vegetables and vitamins -- all essential for proper human growth and development, according to reporting by Joshua Hartwig.

"And in that meal, a child is going to get 100 percent of their daily needs to sustain them, said Christy Wilferth, one of the organizers at the church. "They get one meal a day, and they stand in line and hold these bowls like it's a treasured thing."

Wilferth was recently stationed in Eswatini, known as Swaziland, within Southern Africa for a mission trip, Hartwig reported. She has witnessed the good that transpires through the Feed My Starving Children event.

"We tracked it for a year, to see if it was making a difference," she said. "What they're finding is the kids are so much stronger, they have growth spurts, they're not sick for a month from a cold, their immune system is built up ...

"A lot of these kids take HIV meds; you've got to have protein for that to work. Just so many neat things were happening, and that's just in one, tiny, little spot in Swaziland."

The idea, the hope is that if starving people can find nourishment, they can then address ways to grow gardens for sustainability. But meeting basic needs comes first, and thousands of volunteers locally will join thousands more across the country to pack meals for the starving people.

Often, the volunteers come in large groups, and sometimes not everyone in those large group attends the meal-packing event. So LaCroix has started a waiting list for volunteers in case openings arise. Contact the church for more information.

This event, a decade in the making, has become a holiday tradition in Cape Girardeau that rivals anything with lights or Santa. It embodies the true spirit of Christmas, the gift of Jesus Christ, who is the bread of life for the world. Merry Christmas to all those who take the time to feed the world's starving children this weekend.

Remembering Pearl Harbor

Today is Pearl Harbor Day. We encourage you to take a moment and ponder the moment in this nation's history, a "date which will live in infamy" when our nation was attacked suddenly by naval forces from Japan. The 1941 attack provoked our engagement into World War II, where many soldiers' lives were lost. Today, we honor their memory.