Numana

This morning Madi, Riley and I went to church at 8am to help a group called Numana.  They provide food and water for the starving in Africa.  Our church had them bring a team to help lead us in packaging food.  When told what we were doing, Riley goes "I'm so excited to help!"

We signed in and then got beautiful head covers to wear.  :)  I mean, hair nets :)

We were told to stand in a line and they waited for a minute until there were fourteen of us.  Then we went into the sanctuary.  There were many, many tables set up in factory lines.  We were sent to Table 1.  Everyone was given a certain job by the person in charge of our table.  It went like this:

Gather bag, scoop beans, scoop rice, scoop soy, add vitamin, weigh bag, set in container, seal bag, press items in bag flat and stack two high over 18 rectangles, package 36 bags into box and seal box - then yell and hoot and holler and cheer once box was ready to send!

The kids had to be on the end where we were pressing the bags flat and stacking them high.  Madi wasn't too happy about this at first and wanted to scoop the food.  She didn't want to press them or stack them.  I told her that every job was important and that no matter where they needed us, we were there to help get this food to the people who needed it.  Everything we did today was meaningful and purposeful and important.  She didn't complain after that for the rest of our time.

Madi got really into it after a few bags.  She was smiling and enjoying herself.  It was a little bit hard for Riley to press the tough soy down and the beans, but she did really well.  Madi got to help seal the bags for a while and then helped press the bags down and organize them on the chart on the table.

Riley got tired after an hour.  I gave her a granola bar to eat against the wall where I could see her (couldn't eat at the table).  She drew for a long time and then played with her stuffed animal puppy.  Then helped me seal some bags.  Thought she did a fantastic job!  

Each bag feeds six people.  Totally amazing because it is about the serving size Jeremy and I would eat just the two of us for dinner.  The goal was to serve 600,000 people and create 100,000 bags.  They had scheduled for it to take 4 hours, but they said we finished in record time in only 2 hours.

Ready to start!!

Organizing bags

Getting ready to flatten her bag

Small bag feeds six people for one meal

Kids were able to draw and write messages on the boxes

Madi is sealing the bag while the lady holding it is stretching

(so glad she can't see this picture - she wouldn't like me very much

for posting it -hahahha)

One of Riley's drawings on the box

The entire time we were packaging, there was worship music playing, someone explaining what exactly the meals do, talking about starvation in Africa and how Numana plays a part in helping.  There was a gong that was hit after we reached every 10,000 bags.  Sometimes we reached it by 20,000 bags so quickly that they just skipped some.

About halfway through, Madi said "I want to do this again next year!  I feel so good helping."  I told her we'd try to do it again if they had it and that she absolutely should feel good about helping - she was doing an awesome job!

At the end, I bought two tshirts.  She's really excited to be able to wear to school on Monday and share about her experience.  We talked tonight about what an awesome thing it was that we were able to use our time and do simple tasks that will help so many people.  Was a really great way to look outside ourselves.  And such a fun day!!