FMSC UPDATE

I got to do my volunteer work at FMSC this past Friday and the experience far exceeded my expectations!  You never know what to expect when you walk into a new situation with a random group of people.  Truly I find a lot of volunteer work to be a little bland but this was definitely not the case here.  When I arrived at the Aurora location of Feed My Starving Children I immediately saw a large group of teenage girls standing out front.  Their shirts read Batavia Dance.  It only took me a few minutes to realize that this group was going to be a blast to work with, and boy was I right.  We started by watching a video showing where the food goes and who it feeds, featuring school aged African kids and their caretakers.  We then went to the meal packing (Manna) room and saw different assembly line-like tables set up.  We all lined up along the walls while an enthusiastic volunteer leader showed us what each of us would do.  Each table had 16 positions, each with their own duty.  Mine was to weigh each Manna pack and make sure the weight was between 380 to 400 grams.  Sounds boring right, doing that for two hours?  Wrong.  This is where the Batavia Dance girls came in handy.  Once we started packing, a little boom box was cranked up playing music by Justin Beiber, Miley Cyrus, Nelly.. etc.  The girls sang each song at the top of their lungs and since there were around 50 of them it sounded like a choir right behind me.  The cumulative feel of their excitement, the thought of what we were doing there and the task of weighing each bag and being a part of a assembly line made the time fly by.  Not only was it not boring but it was actually a blast. 

We had 74 people on our team.  All together we created 109 boxes of Manna packs.
Each box held around 214 meals so in total, during our two hours, we created 23,328 meals.  It's easy to get the overwhelming feeling of "how can one person possibly change the world" but when you look at numbers like this and realize that it only took that little amount of time and people to create such a huge amount of meals, it gives you hope and opens your eyes up to the fact that you are.  Even though I got to check this line on my bucket list it really didn't make it any shorter because I immediately put it right back on.  So even though I was here already, it won't be long before I come back.