By Eliza PARTIKA

For the third consecutive year, Salem Lutheran Church will host its MobilePack event to pack meals for families across the globe that are in need. This year, it is partnering with Bethel Lutheran Church – Encino, along with Minnesota-based Feed My Starving Children, to distribute as many as 132,000 meals on the weekend of March 18-22. 

Salem Lutheran Pastor Amie Odahl said the MobilePacks have become an important way for the community to give back.

“[It’s a wonderful way to] have their eyes opened to the ways they can help people they don’t know, to be able to understand that there is hunger in our neighborhoods and in our communities, and in our world, that this is something they can do,” said Odahl. 

Incarnation Catholic Church will have 170 students coming to the event and Salem Lutheran will have 140 for a total of 310 students participating. 

Odahl said the students have been raising money all year for this event and are excited to see where it is going, to see the impact it has. Odahl said $106 helps feed one child for a year by using the special manna grains and vegetable formula Feed My Starving Children distributes to families. The formula ensures the maximum vitamins and nutrients with simple, natural ingredients are provided. 

“When I was a little kid and my dad was a pastor, we would go to a food feeding on Friday nights. We would go and cook meals for people in the inner city of Milwaukee. And so, as a child, I was able to do that,” said Odahl. “I got to interact with the people who needed food in the inner city of Milwaukee, and I got to help stir the pots and do all that sort of thing. And just saw how wonderful it was to be a community of people together that knew food was important for everyone, that food made a community, no matter who you were.” 

Odahl said she hopes that excitement will pass on to the kids and adults who volunteer for the MobilePack event. 

“Children from age 5 all the way up to 105 can participate. It is such a big deal and an important and exciting thing,” Odahl said. “You can make a difference in very small ways. Big actions or small actions can make a difference.” 

Odahl said it is also a way to connect people. 

“No one can come away from this without a smile on their face, because they just know they’ve made a difference, and maybe they have met someone new,” she said.  

Odahl said her goals for MobilePack are to get more funds to purchase the packs of vegetables and grains that are distributed, and to secure more volunteers so maybe one day one million meals will be packed. 

“The first year, we just did it with our community. The second year, people understood how fun it was and how easy, and they were able to expand it,” she said. 

“This is our third year. We’ve got another church joining us. In our fourth year, I would hope to get more individual organizations that already do volunteer stuff to also be a part of our group, and for more employers to bring their employees to help.”

Most event donors are schools and individual families who are told about MobilePack by word of mouth. Donations can be made to MobilePack throughout the month of March. Salem Lutheran begins accepting donations in January. 

To date, Feed My Starving Children has donated 382,120,176 pounds of food to countries around the world, enough to feed 1 million children for a year. 

Times for the Mobile Pack events are: 

March 18 – 5 – 8 p.m. Volunteers needed for set up 

March 20 – 6 – 8 p.m. Volunteers needed to help pack meals 

March 21 – 9 a.m. – 11 a.m. Volunteers needed to help pack meals 

March 21 – 12:30 – 2:30 p.m. Volunteers needed to help pack meals 

March 21 – 6 – 8 p.m. Volunteers needed to help pack meals 

March 22 – noon – 2 p.m. Volunteers needed to help pack meals 

March 22 – 2 – 5 p.m. Volunteers needed to help clean up