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Bellevue Meal Marathon A Big Success
by Erika Giesbrecht
On what turned out to be a beautiful July day in Downtown Park in the city of Bellevue, Washington, over 400 people with the Downtown Church of Bellevue packaged 100,000 meals during a Meal Marathon for our Malawi children’s homes.
The Downtown Church of Bellevue partnered with Children of the Nations on July 31 for their Meal Marathon on the Grand Circular Lawn in Downtown Bellevue. In three sessions lasting just over three hours, every meal was lovingly packaged and prepared for shipping to Malawi.
The event was purposefully set against the backdrop of the beautiful downtown skyline, in the open and accessible venue of Downtown Park as to be open for community involvement. Members of Downtown Church invited family and friends to participate, helping to make the event a huge success.
With Children of the Nations’ own Fraser Ratzlaff encouraging the volunteers on the microphone and our volunteer DJ, Jeremy Anderson, spinning a classic playlist, the groups stayed energized and pumped for the entirety of the Meal Marathon.
Jason Turner, the pastor of Downtown Church of Bellevue, has been dreaming of this particular event to be a discipleship opportunity for their church while gradually becoming an outreach event for the Bellevue community. “We are working toward our church becoming more outwardly focused; being social within the world while living the Gospel,” says Turner. This hope became a reality when spontaneous community involvement became a common tale amongst the volunteers.
In Pastor Turner’s words, this event was their “second annual Meal Marathon,” offering the promise of many more to come. Thank you so much Downtown Church of Bellevue; we can hardly wait to begin planning the “third annual Meal Marathon.”
Interested in getting involved with COTN in Washington? Please contact Erik Nield, Community Relations Manager at eriknield@cotni.org.