Meal-packing event example of the true Christmas spirit

Friday through Sunday, local volunteers will take part in an annual meal-packing effort for Minnesota-based Feed My Starving Children, an organization that seeks to make food available to youngsters in places devoid of sustenance around the globe.

The venue for packing the meals is the Osage Centre in Cape Girardeau, and, as in years past, the chief organizers are the folks at LaCroix Church.

This time around, the group's goal is to pack 925,000 meals containing high-protein dry goods for people in far-flung, impoverished nations. That's 100,000 more meals than were packed last year.

To get it all done, organizers had to schedule nine two-hour shifts of 400 volunteer packers per shift -- one installment Friday evening, five shifts throughout the day Saturday and three shifts on Sunday.

"Thirty-six-hundreed volunteers is what we need, and, as we're speaking, we have them," participant Linda Tenkhoff said Tuesday.

That is truly amazing on so many levels.

In this season of First World gift-giving and feasting with friends and families, bearing witness to such an effort is a beautiful thing indeed.

Our prayers and admiration go to each person who volunteered to help provide nutrition to strangers who need it. That certainly is living the purpose of the season.