By Bonnie Mentel
Last month FishHawk Fellowship Church assisted Food Aid International by packing meals to send to orphans in Haiti. According to the Food Aid International website, the organization is described as, “A humanitarian, global, IRS approved 501(c)(3) non-profit organization that has joined the fight against poverty and world hunger. Through a partnership with Kids Against Hunger, Food Aid packages and ships meals to starving children around the world.”
The website also states that 16,000 children die around the world every day due to hunger related illness.
FishHawk Fellowship is always looking for ways to reach out locally and internationally, but on Saturdays they plan to have quarterly church-wide outreach events that will both stretch them and bless those around them. On that Saturday in November, the church met to practice generosity in place of their standard Saturday evening service.
“It was good to see Scripture in action. A month prior we were in a series called ‘Freedom.’ We talked about freedom from greed. Out of that sermon, our Saturday night church family came together and said, ‘Look, we need to do something about our own greed. The best way to bump ourselves off of greed is through a life of great generosity,” Pastor Daniel Butson said.
Pastor Butson pointed out that life doesn’t consist in the abundance of possessions as it says in Luke 12:15. He wants everyone to know that Jesus is our greatest gift and that God is the most generous God that we could ever imagine. Because of that, he said, we (Christians) should be the most generous people on the planet.
“We had about 290 people, from 5-years-old to 75-years-old. It was really cool to see everyone at work. We were able to pack the team 26,131 meals together in about an hour and 15 minutes. It was a pretty amazing event,” Pastor Butson said.
The meals, which consist of four main ingredients: rice, a soy protein, dried vegetables, and a vitamin mixture, will be shipped to Haiti in December. The boxes have a shelf life of three years and each box is able to feed six orphans.
FishHawk Fellowship Church is located at 15326 Fishhawk Blvd. in Lithia. Call 655-7431 or visit www.fishhawkfc.org or www.food-aid.org.
