Seven area churches partnered together with IDES (International Disaster Emergency Services) to put meals together for people in Ukraine.

Those seven churches were Rinehart Christian Church, Walker Christian Church, Rich Hill Christian Church, Hume Christian Church, 1st Christian out of Nevada, and Community Christian out of Nevada, and Sheldon Christian Church.

“It was a great time of coming together with other believers in Jesus and working on a common goal/project,” said Kevin Moyers, Pastor at Rinehart Christian Church.

Friday evening, March 25th, a truck arrived at the Rinehart Church from Indianapolis and about 30 people helped unload the truck of all the food supplies.  “We set up 10 lines (2 tables in each line) from which the food would be handled the next morning and put into bags,” Moyers said.

On Saturday, March 26th, approximately 120 people from those 7 churches gathered at 9 a.m. and for the next three hours were busy, packaging 53,280 meals.

“It’s hard to imagine how that is possible, but you would have had to see it to imagine it,”  Moyers said. “The system that IDES has in place for this kind of service project is very efficient.  And of course, it takes people who are willing to ‘stay at it.’ Older folks, younger folks, kids…everyone working together to the glory of God.  This was actually a fun project to do!”

The food bags consisted of rice, soy, dried vegetables, and a bag of 21 essential vitamins and nutrients.  When full, the bags were six servings, therefore six meals per bag.  The recipient of the bag of food will add the contents to 1.5-2 liters of boiling water, and after cooking for 20 minutes there is enough food that will fill to overflowing a 2 qt. crockpot. IDES figures the cost of each meal at twenty-five cents.  Figure the total cost of this project:  $13,320.  The seven churches partnered in coming up with that money.

“It was a really great event to be a part of,” Pastor Moyers said.  “IDES has committed 1,000,000 meals to Ukraine, and we were so happy to be a part of that relief effort.  We weren’t sure at first where the food was going to go, as this event has been in the planning stage for about nine months.  IDES is a crisis relief ministry and they send help all over the world.  When we were told on Saturday this shipment of food was going to Ukraine it was very exciting to our people.”