If there is one true thing about the Demos family, it’s that it’s constantly growing! Jordan grew up as one of four Demos kids, and since then, his parents have adopted another son, our littlest brother, Musa. His oldest brother, Nick, got married to his sweet wife, Anna, and they brought us our very first niece and nephew, Olivia and Luke and his other two siblings, Stefan and Caelen, are in serious relationships, too! As you can imagine, when we all get around one table it is big and loud and crazy. But we wouldn’t have it any other way! As we all started to notice this family wasn’t getting any smaller (or any younger!) we realized it was time for a new plan for our annual family Christmas gift exchange. So instead of swapping Christmas gifts with each other this year, we decided to make a memory together by volunteering our time to serve others, and take those dollars we would’ve spent on each other and each buy a full box of food for Feed My Starving Children, a mission organization near and dear to our hearts. Together, the six of us were able to purchase a total of 1,296 meals, enough food to feed a family of four for an entire year! How amazing is that?!
It’s beyond heartbreaking, and even hard to believe, that in this day and age 6,000 children still die every day from starvation. The reason we love Feed My Starving Children is it’s a non-profit Christian organization committed to feeding God’s children hungry in body and spirit, and acknowledges that before there can be a strong community, sustainability, education, and a thriving economy, there has to be food. Their approach is simple: volunteers hand-pack meals specifically formulated for malnourished children, and they ship those meals to nearly 70 countries around the world, with the hope to one day eliminate starvation in children throughout the world all together.
So this week, the Demos crew headed to the FMSC warehouse, and volunteered to pack as many boxes of food as we could (while we jammed out to Beyonce, Christmas carols and a slew of dance-while-you-work music that kept us pumped) as we all spent time together. We had to work as a team assembly-line style to stuff, weigh, seal and pack each bag of food until we had enough bags for an entire box. The warehouse was buzzing with energy and soon everyone’s competitive spirit kicked into overdrive, with every table trying to beat every other table’s numbers and maximize every minute of packing. By the time the session was over, the warehouse as a whole had packed over 17 thousand meals, all with our own hands!
Here we are rockin’ our sweet hairnets. Yep. We’re #bringinghairnetsback.
The Demos family is a pretty competitive bunch, so we were all focused on moving as fast as possible to keep the count of packed meals as high as we could for our table.
Jordan’s oldest brother, Nick, and his wife, Anna, probably had the hardest job! Getting those plastic bags open and holding them under the funnel is a lot harder than it looks! Amy may or may not have gotten a little too excited and poured vitamin powder all over Anna before the bag was under the funnel, but her sweet smile never left her face! Maybe it’s because her husband is an all-star, slow-motion rice pour-er.
Jordan’s little sister, Caelen, and her boyfriend, Austin, were down at the end of the table, sealing the bags and packing them into the boxes, in between their singing and dancing to the warehouse music.
Time to seal the deal! (Pun intended. Like really intended)
Austin packin’ boxes for our table like a boss.
The Demos girls!
100% of FMSC’s food is bought solely with donations. They are incredible stewards of the resources they get and it was such a blessing to us to each sponsor a box. If you feel called to donate to Feed My Starving Children, you can do it here. It’s even tax deductible! Every amount makes a difference. Even $33 feeds five children for an entire month!
A lot of world hunger organizations aren’t able to successfully get all of their shipments to the people who need them because they are intercepted during transport by warlords and terrorist groups, but FMSC has a 99% success rate. They pray over every single pallet that gets shipped, and pray for safety, provision and a smooth delivery so that the children who so desperately need the food in these boxes are able to fill their bodies with nourishment. They get these boxes directly to missionaries on the ground in each country, and the missionaries are then able to distribute the food to the starving children safely and efficiently. We closed out our session by praying over all of the boxes.
The whole team! This was such the perfect way for us to connect as a family. We were all able to hit pause on our busy lives, and come together, take the focus off of ourselves, and instead serve others together. We all left feeling less stressed, more fulfilled and beyond thankful for our lives and for each other.
If you and a group of your family or friends want to volunteer at Feed My Starving Children, they have permanent warehouses in Arizona, Illinois and Minnesota, as well as a massive amount of mobile-packing events scheduled all across the U.S. You can find out how to volunteer by clicking here and how to donate by clicking here. We can’t encourage you enough to check it out and get involved! You won’t regret it!
