11/21/2024
Last summer we began an effort, which lasted several months, to pray for every city school employee. We sent every employee in the school directories a note that we were praying and included a prayer request form if they wanted us to pray specifically for them. One of the individuals sent back a request form concerning issues of food insecurity among school children during Christmas break. To the individual who voiced this concern, you were heard. We have spent months in prayer about this and what follows is our goal for this year at least.
The Snack Sack for Students project began to take shape. Sunday, the board approved the plan, goal and budget for this project. Pastor Tim has shared snippets over the past few months of how things were coming together, but he did not share too much information so as to overwhelm anyone.
Beginning November 25 and going until December 13, we will collect individually wrapped, shelf-stable, pre-packaged, ready-to-eat snacks. From the food we collect, we will put together a Snack Sack for a student to take home over the Christmas break. Simple plan right? Collect food, put it in a bag, and give it to a child. We were going to try to do this for each student at one of the schools near the church. God placed an individual along the path who challenged us to pray bigger. God moved the goalposts from one local school to three. Currently our goal is 550 Snack Sacks, enough for one per child at the three schools. But wait, there's more.
The individual who helped us dream bigger volunteered to reach out for donations from local businesses. The first donation was given by a business who has nothing to do with food, but was willing to contribute cash to the project. A $100 check was written on the spot when they were asked. So, the plan changed again to reach to as many Centralia business as possible for donations of food or finances. The church set a budget for the project, and we will not use any donation for the project to pay for the bags, stickers, distribution, or anything else. All donations will be 100% used for food items in the Snack Sacks.
We have tried putting items in a bag to gauge a decent gift and it seems we need about 10 items per bag. Doing a quick calculation, that means we need 5,500 items to fill the original number of bags we planned on doing. We have enough packages of Pop-tarts to put one in each of those 550 bags already donated. So, we need an additional 5,000 items. Anyone who wants to help with a donation can drop it off at the church or you can send a monetary donation and mark it for Snack Sacks for Students and someone will go buy items to place in the bags.
On Dec. 15, following the morning service, we are going to have a Snack Sack Packing Party. Lunch will be provided, and we can use all the help we can get to come help assemble the bags.
Now for the God moment in this. We set a goal of 550 Snack Sacks. However, we will not stop at 550 if we receive sufficient donations to expand this project. We will give out as many Snack Sacks as we can create from the items we have donated. Again, we are looking to place about 10 items per bag, and we have a plan to decide how to make each bag as equal as possible. However large the donation total becomes, we will divide the food by 10 and make that many Snack Sacks. Let's just say this is a scary endeavor, because we have no idea what God is asking us to do. Jesus fed 5000 men, plus women and children, with five small loaves and two fish. We are following His lead in this project, and want to see Him work through this idea that He birthed in us.
Feel free to send me a private message, or post publicly if you wish, if you have questions or thoughts. Pastor Tim will do his best to answer them all.
