The youth of Morgan Hill’s Advent Lutheran Church will suffer
for a good cause next week. By experiencing a 30-hour fast they
will raise money to help feed the world’s hungry.
The youth of Morgan Hill’s Advent Lutheran Church will suffer for a good cause next week. By experiencing a 30-hour fast they will raise money to help feed the world’s hungry.
An estimated 840 million people around the world go to bed hungry regularly. Fourteen thousand children die from causes related to hunger daily. One in six children in the United States lives in poverty, and that number is bound to increase as our economic recession deepens.
But some 30 seventh- through 12th-graders at Advent have pledged to address this problem. Beginning at 3 a.m. Feb. 28, they will go without food for 30 hours, meanwhile raising money to support poor people around the world.
Donations from sponsors and sympathetic residents will go to two respected charities:World Vision and ELCA World Hunger.
The Morgan Hill students will engage in a number of activities during the famine period.
– On Saturday, some of them will be out in the community raising awareness of the hunger problem by positioning themselves in busy commercial areas and soliciting monetary contributions through holding signs such as “Will Starve for Food.”
– Others will be conducting a canned food drive in residential neighborhoods.
– The youth group has publicized their goals ahead of time, asking members of their congregation to collect change and bring it to church. On Sunday, they will collect a “noisy offering” at worship services; parishioners can drop the coins into metal offering plates to signify support of the fight against hunger.
– Saturday evening they will play games that teach participants about life in other countries and the challenges of malaria, AIDS, contaminated water, drought and primitive transportation systems.
– They will also participate in walking an “interactive labyrinth.” This prayer path incorporates the ancient tradition of pilgrimage with a variety of stations that include art, media, prayer and meditation.
– They will have opportunities to reflect on their experiences during the fast through the use of Twitter under the user name “ADVENTYOUTH” and blogs posted on the youth group’s MySpace page found at www.myspace.com/servants_of_god.
An important part of the 30 hours will be “downtime” when they can rest and share thoughts and feelings with each other.
South County residents are invited to help the youth in battling hunger. Support can be offered through a check made out to the church with “30-Hour Famine” written on the subject line or online by going to www.30hourfamine.org. All donations are tax deductible as charitable contributions.
The community is also invited to another event that will support world hunger relief. On Tuesday, Feb. 24, there will be a Shrove Tuesday Pancake Supper from 7 to 9 p.m. Tickets are $3 per person; children two and under are free. Shrove Tuesday is an ancient tradition.
Wednesday, Feb. 25 is Ash Wednesday, the start of the Christian penitential season of Lent that leads up to Easter.
Since Lent was traditionally a time of fasting and abstinence, some people celebrated the day before with wild parties and parades –think of “Mardi Gras” (French for “Fat Tuesday”) celebrations in New Orleans and Rio de Janeiro.
In places like England, though, the custom was to eat up the foods that would soon be forbidden by holding a communal meal featuring pancakes. Some parishes developed races for participants who ran while flipping pancakes in skillets.
For more information about Shrove Tuesday or the 30-Hour Famine, call (408) 779-3551 or e-mail of****@*************an.org.
