Thanksgiving.

This is the school cafeteria, in Zoranger, Haiti. This is where 4 ladies prepare meals for about 400 school children. You see those cardboard boxes in the background? Those are Manna Packs. In my place of work I get to handle these bad boys A LOT! I evidently missed the box on my application that said "willing and able to lift 50lbs or more over and over and over again!"

(There's a lot about the job description of a missionary that you'd be very surprised about! Painting, radio and tv appearances, debris removal, shoe selling, roofing, some days you need a hairnet, some days you need a back pack, some days you'll need your best dress, you just never know, but it's all to make Jesus known!!)

I've been with Convoy of Hope for 14 months now. From Springfield, Missouri to the Philippine Islands, I've probably never been more than a few feet away from a Manna Pack.

If you come visit me at my office, you'll make the trek through our 300,000 foot warehouse and you'll pass palets upon palets of these Manna Packs. On one of my first days in Nairobi, Kenya the missionary had us unload an entire shipping container of these. My first encounter may NOT have been one of love with the Manna Packs. Thanks Bryan Burr. My next team was headed to the Philippines and we knew we were gonna need some of these guys for our ministry there, so we loaded up a container full of Manna Packs to meet us in Manila. (They were just as heavy in the US as they were in Africa!) When we got to the PI, Japan happened. Our disaster response guys called us and asked us to meet them at the Convoy of Hope warehouse there in Manila. Know what we did?!? Loaded up a shipping container full of Manna Packs for the victims in Japan. (I think they may have been heavier in the Philippines!) Yep, NOT in love with the Manna Packs! Until Haiti.

The above photos speak for themselves, but once you see a Manna Pack in action, there's no regret, there's no remembrance of the aching back, or when they were dropped on your head, or when the rat ran across your foot in the container! (Well, ALMOST no remembrance!) But there's A LOT of Thanksgiving, thanksgiving for the donors, for the warehouse workers, for the truck drivers, for the logistics department, for the missionaries waiting at the port to pick it up, for the national staff who handle it, for the provision for the beautiful children who eat them, and for the opportunity to pull up to an orphanage, open the back of the truck and handle those cardboard boxes one last time. Manna Packs are light as a feather in Haiti!