Concordia students pack over 60,000 Mercy Meals during Homecoming weekend
Student volunteers move a pallet full of meal boxes up the ramp to the top level of the Janzow Campus Center.
Photo credit: Michaela Gibbs
By Michaela Gibbs
Volunteers at Concordia packed almost 62,000 meals on Oct. 6 as a Homecoming Week service event organized by the Director of Christian Education practicum students. They partnered with the Lincoln branch of Orphan Grain Train and its Mercy Meals ministry and Thrivent Financial provided the funding for all the materials used in the meals.
The Orphan Grain Train truck parked on the east side of Janzow Campus Center. Photo: Nora Betts
Jim Carter is the branch manager for the Orphan Grain Train Warehouse in Lincoln. Orphan Grain Train is a nonprofit Christian volunteer network that shares resources with persons in need across the world. Volunteers gather donations of clothing, food, medical supplies, and Christian literature to meet a variety of real needs.
The Mercy Meals ministry allows Orphan Grain Train to do mobile events as well as events held at the warehouse. Carter described the ministry as a way to spread the gospel.
“Mercy Meals, that’s such a blessing because it allows us to communicate the ministry of feeding the hungry, of bringing the gospel to them, because with an empty stomach it’s kind of hard to listen to someone preach the gospel,” Carter said. “Feeding the hungry is really what Mercy Meals is all about.”
The DCE students had set a goal of the campus packing 50,000 meals by the end of the day and exceeded that goal by almost 12,000 additional meals. There were five volunteer sessions, each an hour long, throughout the day, plus setup and cleanup shifts. Although there was not an exact count of student volunteers, Carter estimated that around 300 students were involved throughout the day.
Carter specifically mentioned the A Cappella choir, who served during one of the morning shifts. Choir member Emily Castens said she enjoyed the opportunity to serve others in a new way.
“I appreciated that the A Cappella got to work together in a completely different way than we normally do,” said Castens. “We usually give back spiritually, but this was a chance to give back tangibly. It’s a really cool thing that Concordia offers opportunities to volunteer because it can be difficult to at this time of our lives, to find opportunities to serve others in that way.”
