Volunteers hope to pack 272,160 meals at Glen Ellyn church
Roughly 1,300 volunteers will gather this weekend at Glen Ellyn Bible Church with one goal in mind: to pack 272,160 meals for families that might otherwise go hungry.
For the fifth year, the church will play host to a Feed My Starving Children Mobile Pack session, where food will be sorted, packed and readied for shipment to a place where the need is greatest.
Church leaders say they never know exactly where the food they pack will end up.
“We've had people on the ground in Africa and Haiti who have seen boxes with our church's name on it,” said John Foster, the church's care and outreach pastor. Past packages also have been shipped to Guatemala and North Korea.
A truck from Feed My Starving Children is due to deliver the food components to the church on Thursday. The three-day packing frenzy will begin Friday.
FMSC, a nonprofit Christian organization based in Minnesota, has seven permanent food-packing sites. One is in Aurora, where Glen Ellyn Bible Church volunteers initially got involved in the effort, Foster said.
The project gives members of the congregation a chance to demonstrate their compassion and to help others.
“We want to state the love of Jesus, verbally, and we want to tangibly demonstrate it,” Foster said.
The church began hosting the annual packing events in 2014 on its campus at 501 Hillside Ave.
“If you host, you pay for the price of the meals,” he said. “This event costs $60,000.”
The church raises money for the project through donations from church members, mobile pack participants and a variety of local businesses, who also donate food to feed the volunteers.
The Glen Ellyn Bible Church Mobile Pack is one of 19 FMSC packing events to be held this year in Illinois. Dozens of others are scheduled for locations nationwide.
Foster said the Glen Ellyn event will involve eight, 2-hour packing sessions, each supported by teams of 160 volunteers, meeting from Friday to Sunday in the church gymnasium.
“We are hoping to see 1,300 people pass through the building on the weekend,” Foster said.
The food is all nonperishable and is assembled at 16 packing stations.
“They (FMSC) developed a formula that has soy, veggies and rice and they put it in a complete packet. It's all a dry mix. It will not only give you a full feeling, but fulfill your nutritional needs,” he said.
Foster said he has personally sampled the mix.
“It's actually good,” he said. “I'm sure if you're hungry, it's really good.”
Foster said signup for the event began in early March and turnout has been strong, though last-minute volunteers are welcome.
“We can find room for extra volunteers. We want as many people as possible to participate,” he said. “It's a pretty fun event. It's hard work. You've got to concentrate.
“When you actually get there and are packing food for two hours, you realize, ‘We actually made a dent.' But there's still so much more to do,” he said.
Since 2012, Foster said, the church has raised roughly $300,000 for Feed My Starving Children.
“We have packed over a million meals now,” he said.