It has been one month since our Sound Off for Hunger event. This one-of-a-kind youth event began with an invitation to give up something we rely on everyday… technology. For 48 hours we shut down all our phones, videogames, computers and other forms of entertainment technology, and as one 6th grade girl shared, “it was the hardest thing I have ever done.” Yet without so much noise to distract us, 32 students gathered together and tuned in to God’s heart for the hungry.
The night was filled with hunger-related experiences. For example, dinner simulated global hunger proportions by giving most students a simple meal of rice and water, a few had a larger portion of rice and an orange and only two students had a full meal-pizza and ice cream. Elise and Artem were confronted with the difficult reality that while they had so much, the majority around them, had so little.
The remainder of the night was eventful as we, walked through the stories of three individuals who suffer from hunger, discussed what God has to say about this and spent some time in prayer. And of course, we topped off the night by turning off all the lights in the church and playing “Tiger.”
Overall, these students made some serious noise on behalf of the hungry, by raising an unbelievable $770 for Colonial’s “Hope for Haiti” food-packing event and collecting a dumpster full of food through a neighborhood food drive! At first, Sound Off for Hunger seemed like an impossible challenge for these students. However, by the end of the weekend, these students had succeeded in escaping the noise of the world around them in order to make a difference in the story of hunger.
Nicole