Okay, so, I lied in Monday's post, but I promise that the very next blog post will be our answers to the 10 Questions to Ask Your Dairy Farmer. Really. I already have it written. I just had to interject this post first because Thanksgiving is sneaking up on me! And that means that at our house, it's Hunger Week.
(Disclaimer: If some of this sounds familiar, it's because pieces of it were borrowed from a previous year's post. This will be our 3rd year to observe Hunger Week as a family.)
Thanksgiving will be here soon! Let us not forget in this season of thankfulness the many who will not be joining us at the table of plenty.
World hunger statistics are sobering, to say the least. One child dies hungry every 6 seconds. How many children would that be during our Thanksgiving meal alone? When Girl 1 first heard this statistic, she just looked at me and started slowly counting as the tears welled up in her eyes.
I don't mean to be a downer this holiday. I do mean to challenge you to do something about the plight of the needy. So, I'm doing what the video asks of me and telling a friend (who will hopefully tell a friend who will hopefully tell a friend, etc.).
In the past, our family has donated the money we "raise" this week to Bread for the World. This year, we plan to donate it to Heifer International to purchase a goat for a family we will most likely never meet. This seems a fitting gift, since we know firsthand what a goat can do to provide nourishment to a family.
We plan to raise the money for this the same way we did last year. And, you can do it, too.
We plan to eat Ramen noodles every night for a week. The grocery money saved will go into our "goat savings" to send to Heifer. We eat like this in an attempt to better understand the plight of the hungry. Rice and beans would be a much more appropriate meal if we were trying to eat the way most of the hungry world eats. But, my kids won't eat rice and beans. They just won't. And, we DO plan to feed our kids this week. We choose Ramen because it's about the cheapest thing I can think of to feed us that we will all eat. Also, it probably pretty closely approximates the way our closest hungry neighbors eat.
Why the same thing every night of the week? When you're truly hungry, food diversity is a luxury you do not have. You eat what is available, and often it's the same thing . . . over and over again.
The week leading up to Thanksgiving seems a fitting time to undergo this challenge and prayerful focus. To focus our mealtimes on the task at hand, we will begin each of our evening meals together with a special prayer. Here are links to the beautiful prayers we intend to use.
- Sharing our Abundance
- That We May Be Satisfied
- Prayer of Confession
- May I Hunger Enough
- Traditional Native American Prayer
(this link contains two separate prayers) -- Prayers at the Table
Will you join with us? Put your own spin on it. Eat something else. Or, don't change the way you eat at all but click on the prayers when you sit down to the table each night and join with us as we pray for the hungry of our world.