Souper Bowl

Jaime and I are blessed to be a part of a church that makes huge impact in the community, and around the world. Recently our church (Lutheran Church of Hope) had a food drive called Souper bowl food drive. This all took place over Super Bowl weekend. The goal was to fill all the shelves in the Des Moines area food pantries. First it sounded like a ridiculous stretch goal, but the members of the church flooded the grocery stores. We filled the hallways of the church, and filled the shelves of all the local food pantries. 

Jaime and I usually do our grocery shopping every Sunday after church. This particular Sunday Pastor Mike urged the congregation to stop by the store, grab a few items, and bring them back before the big game. I stayed at church to helped out with a few things, and expected Jaime to be back within 45 minutes. After about a hour I called to see what was keeping her so long. She said that the grocery store was filled with people from church buying up all the non-parishables. While I was "patiently" waiting for the next 45 minutes, I watched the line of cars dropping off food. Someone from the church mentioned how fun volunteering for the souper bowl drive is, so I decided to sign up the very next day to help sort food. I was assigned to the soup section. My job was to sort through as many cans I possible could within my 2 hour time slot. I was blown away by how many cans of soup there was to sort. Others that were volunteering sorted though other items like pasta, peanut butter, canned fruits and veggies and so on... 

After a few days of volunteers sorting through the food they divided up all the items so each of the 46 food pantries received a variety of food items. The total amount of food collected and distributed around the Des Moines area added up to 150,000 pounds of food. It sure is amazing what a group of people can accomplish together.