The HOPE worldwide Granite State Chapter recently completed a successful food drive for End 68 Hours of Hunger, a New Hampshire not-for-profit organization dedicated to providing meal and snack supplies for food-insecure school children to help sustain them during the 68 hours from Friday afternoon through Monday morning, in which they do not receive free lunch and breakfast at school. Food-insecure families are so limited in their resources to buy food that they often reduce the quality of their food, cut out meat, feed their children unbalanced meals, or skip meals all together. Approximately 14.7% of New Hampshire’s children are food insecure (40,490 children) and approximately 139,910 adults. Studies show that helping families in this way this greatly improves a child’s future physical and mental health, academic achievement, and long term economic productivity.
“Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. Test me in this, ‘says the Lord Almighty,’ and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that there will not be room enough to store it.” — Malachi 3:10 (NIV)
It was Father’s Day weekend and rain was forecasted. Volunteers from the Granite State Chapter of HOPE worldwide, members of the Granite State Church of Christ, braved the forecast and joyfully the community food drive produced a total of $12,780 worth of food and monetary donations for End 68 Hours of Hunger, shattering their goal of $5,000.
Upon seeing the food donations that the Granite State Chapter had raised, one End 68 Hours of Hunger volunteer said, “We have never seen a food drive like this. This is amazing!” They were impressed with the organization of the food drive, the joyful volunteers, and the vast amount of food being donated. Grocery store shelves were emptied by volunteers and some items were completely sold out, having been purchased by the volunteers for the food drive. Donations filled the storage room at the End 68 Hours headquarters, so another storage location had to be used. One of the representatives from End 68 Hours of Hunger shared that his wife, the site coordinator, actually cried in disbelief and gratitude.
God’s love was displayed through the hearts of the HOPE worldwide volunteers from the Granite State Church of Christ to serve and meet the needs of the poor and needy.
