About 70 volunteers helped package boxes with rice and soy for a third-world country at Wesley United Methodist Church. Photo by Steve Hibbard.
For the third year in a row, about 70 people from Wesley United Methodist Church in Mount Vernon took part in Stop Hunger Now on Sunday, June 10, where they formed assembly lines and bagged 10,000 meals of rice, soy, spices, and vitamins and boxed them up for a needy third-world country.
In the past, they’ve sent food to Nicaragua and Honduras; this year they’re not sure where the food will be shipped. All of it is donated to needy people in Latin and Central America, said Charles Anderson, chair of the Board of Trustees at Wesley. They also have a domestic program where they ship to Appalachia as well, he said.
According to Pastor Lydia Rodriguez: “We love God and we love others and we’ve learned that the best way to love other people is through our actions. So, some years ago we entered into partnership with Rise Against Hunger, which is a ministry where people gather and in a good atmosphere of love and joy, they pack meals that are eventually are going to feed very needy people. In this case, today we will pack 10,000 meals that will make a difference in a country or here in the United States and help others to enhance their quality of life.”
Added Scott Moore, Missions chair: “Wesley is a small church, but we’ve got a big heart…Wesley is the community cornerstone of the Mount Zephyr community so we partner with our neighborhoods, our friends, colleagues, and extended networks outside the Mount Zephyr area to bring us all together to do these things.”
Rise Against Hunger is a food relief organization that has been packaging food since 2005. Its goal is to end hunger by the year 2030, said Joe Gautier, assistant program manager.