It all began 8 years ago when a starving girl in Nicaragua asked me for food. It a moment in time, everything that I wanted to be or do for the rest of my life was reset like you hit a button on a computer to bring up a whole new screen. While I held the beautiful, but filthy little girl and wept at her overwhelming poverty and hunger, I made a vow to God I’d do whatever I could for the rest of my life to feed hungry people.
So I came back to Kansas and made plans for my next trip to Nicaragua. Then I did it again. And again. And again. Taking as many people and as much money with me as possible so we could hand out food and medicine, I made numerous trips to various countries Central America and Africa. And each time I came home I would tell the stories but often to people who didn’t seem to care. Like patting a child on a head and saying, “Well, aren’t you a nice little boy!”, I’d get that reaction from people and it bothered me.
It bothered me that they didn’t seem to care. But I was wrong. People do care. They care very deeply. But people get frustrated when the care but they can’t do anything except maybe write a check. So it wasn’t that they didn’t care, it was that I was unknowingly frustrating them because I wasn’t giving them any new options besides giving money. You see, we want to DO something about global hunger, but our only option has been to write a check to some organization hoping that they do the right thing with it. People needed a new option. It occurred to me that the only option people had to respond with when I was telling them the story was for them to either go with me or write me a check. Either way, I was asking for their money.
While in Nicaragua, I discovered a 7×9 inch bags of food that was being passed out that had been packaged by volunteers in the U.S. My sister Carmen Miller and I flew back to West Virginia to meet Lyle Mullins of Food for Children to check out his process. Lyle is an incredible man with a great worldwide impact out of a small town in the Appalachian town of Princeton. In his office is a plaque that reads, “Make no little plans here!”
Lyle was very encouraging to me and gave me several options to consider. Never at any time did he pressure me to become an extension of his work- he just wanted to help me in any way he could. I have found since that time that the collegiality of people who care about global hunger issues is refreshing. With those who really care, there is no competition because the need for us all to work together is so overwhelming. 25,000 people die each day, every day of the year, because of hunger. That’s obscene. That’s like watching 71 “747″ jets full of people crashing into the ground every day.
Little two little kids, Carmen and I travelled home from our meeting with Lyle excited to get our own Packaging system started back in Kansas. We were already talking about what building we could use and how we would fund it. We thought we could be up and running in a month.
That was seven years ago. From my first encounter with the little girl in Nicaragua, it took almost 8 full years before we packaged our first meal.
