Volunteers Pack Over 60,000 Meals at St. Andrew’s Church in Brainerd

Cross Catholic Outreach, a Vatican-endorsed Catholic nonprofit, partnered with St. Andrew’s Catholic Church in Brainerd to pack meals for children and families in poverty-stricken countries. This Saturday, volunteers gathered at St. Andrew’s with the hopes of packing 60,000 meals.

On Saturday, many people flocked to St Andrew’s Church in Brainerd to share their blessings with the less fortunate. The Catholic churches in Brainerd repeatedly look for projects like the meal packing project on Saturday to help those dealing with hardship.

“So the Brainerd Lakes Area has a really strong Catholic presence, and they’re always looking for opportunities to do faith and action service projects,” said Cross Catholic Outreach Development Officer Melissa Kaufenberg. “So they reached out to Cross Catholic Outreach to put a food-packing event together to serve the poorest of the poor in over 33 of the countries that we serve.”

For many people at the event, they felt it was really important to help others as they recognized that they live in a country where food is very accessible to them, as opposed to other parts of the world.

“We are so blessed to live in a country that has so many nonprofit organizations that serve the poorest of the poor all around the country. And that’s not the case in some developing countries,” stated Kaufenberg. “So that’s where we in the United States, and especially Cross Catholic Outreach, have an opportunity to step in and really lift those developing countries up by providing them with food, providing them with housing and agriculture and education.”

Packing over 60,000 meals requires a large number of volunteers. Over 150 people took time out of their weekend to help people they will likely never meet. Seeing this amount of support was emotional for some.

“Definitely it is extremely encouraging, you know, it can move anybody to tears to see the love, the joy, and the enthusiasm in seeing other brothers and sisters, no matter where they may be, being fed,” explained Fr. Gabriel Waweru, pastor at St. Andrew’s. “Another way we are also giving thanks and praise to God [is] because we are already blessed. We have so much in our community. So this is just a very small gesture of our gratitude to God.”

In total, the volunteers packed 61,244 meals, 1,244 over the goal. All of the work was completed in two-and-a-half hours.