In the words of someone great- "Spectacular"

'Nough Said.

The day began with a good nights' rest under the stars and started with a good deovtional about heretics and our personal heresies. Although we are staying here at the farm, this is not exclusively where we are spending all our time. Today we were able to visit with The Texas Hunger Initiative and learn about the amazing things that extraordinay people are doing to end hunger here in Texas Not just by going in and feeding people which is masking the true problem, but rather educating them and teaching them how they can feed themselves with the tools that God has provided them with.

This seems to me to be a very prevelant issue that is continuing to prove true in my personal opinion. If we would simply educate ourselves about the things that we are ingesting and choosing to eat on a day to day basis, we soon see that none and I mean NONE of it is healthy. This is proving to be fatal for so many people out there that don't have the money and the means to buy healthy organic foods in supermarkets and at farmer's markets. So this is where the Texas Hunger Initiative is coming in to play a huge role. They have been working with people in high government areas, and local farmers and ordinary people to bring about a change in the way people see hunger and to help combat it in ways not previosly thought about. They are a huge sponser of our trip, and I say this not only to promote them and encourage you to look into the great things they are doing but to get out there and find something you are passionate about as well.

Moving on in our day, we traveled around to East Waco where we ate lunch with a church group that has a summer feeding program to provide children from basically birth to 18 with a hot meal. It was rather funny when we walked in all the kids immediately lit up and started pointing to us and wanted to ask questions about where we were from and what our names were. One little boy started to say that he knew us and that we had been to his house before and all of us started to giggle to ourselves and play along with whatever he was saying. All the kids were adorable. Before we grabbed our meal I began to talk with one youngster and I asked him if the food was good. They were eating spaghetti and some sort of veggies(if you can call them that). He said the spaghetti was watered down and there were no veggies on his plate. He even said that the fruit--soaked in syrup--was "ok." We stayed for a little longer learning more about the specific program they had going on there and left to meet with a man that was going to share more about hunger.

After learning we asked Bethel, who works here on the farm, what the nutritional value there was in the meals that these kids were getting and as surprising as it seems, there wasn't any. Even though yes we are getting food to these kids, it isnt healthy food. That really got us thinking about how much we need to reconsider the food system here in America. Food for thought.

Laslty we met Vernon, who is a local and we told him our thoughts and he shared much of his thoughts about what we were doing with hunger and to shorten this post I'm giving you a video clip. Basically his points were are we really helping, or are we hurting? In helping so many times we come in and assume that an area needs, say a shelter so we give them one without giving them the love, the caring people that they actually need. There are so many different avenues of helping and hurting that I could go on all day, and probable not make any sense so I'll let him explain. This video took too long so i'll post at a later date.

In conclusion of the day we were able to put into practice all we had learned by shopping wisely at the grocery store and creating a healthy, hearty meal for all at the end of the day. PIZZA!!!

- Dani :-)

goodnight all