Eastern District Synod--Not Your Ordinary Kind of Meeting

Can you tell what's happening in this picture?

This is the plenary session during the first night of the Eastern District Synod. If you've ever been to a Synod or other convention-type gathering, you know that a plenary session is a meeting of the full group where presentations are made and business gets conducted. Usually during a plenary session, participants sit at tables, their agendas and important documents stacked before them, their attention directed toward the leadership personnel seated on the dais and speaking from the lecturn. 

But not this time.

This time the entire company of Synod processed from its usual meeting space to a gymnasium set up as a makeshift factory. There, each of us was handed a plastic apron and a hairnet. We were directed to work stations where we were assigned very specific tasks:

• Open the plastic bag, insert a vitamin/flavoring packet
• Hold the plastic bag beneath the large, yellow funnel
• Precisely measure and dump one of 4 ingredients into the yellow funnel: soy flour, dried beans, dried vegetables or rice
• Remove plastic bag and pass it to the weigh station for quality control
• Seal and stack the bags
• Pack into cardboard cartons for shipping

Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.

And what was the result? During our one-hour session, we packaged 32,000 servings of high protein meals destined to feed desperately hungry people in Haiti. 32,000!

Best. Meeting. Ever.