Trinity Lutheran to hold fish boil dinner in support of group’s relief work
Across the globe hungry, destitute people live day-to-day without warm clothing, nourishing food, clean water, shelter or medical care. By building on the Bible verse, John 14:18, “I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you,” the Orphan Grain Train takes up the cause of human relief needs in the United States and worldwide, coming to help and care as members of a worldwide family.
One of the signature fundraisers for the Orphan Grain Train is the fish boil dinner – or a Wisconsin-style fish feed. A special crew of chefs prepare the fish, pearl onions and new potatoes in a specially seasoned pot of brine. Side dishes and desserts round out the meal.
Trinity Lutheran Church in Mountain Lake will be hosting such a feed on Sunday, October 9, with serving from 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. A freewill offering will be accepted. The church is located at 1418 2nd Avenue. All proceeds will be used to defray shipping costs of humanitarian aid to those in need.
Orphan Grain Train is a Christian volunteer network that ships donated food, clothing, medical and other needed items to people in 64 different countries – including the United States.
Remarkably, only three pennies of every dollar spent go to overhead; 97 cents for towards the mission of helping disaster victims and other needy people both here at home in this country and around the world.
In 1992, Rev. Ray S. Wilke, pastor of Grace Lutheran Church in Norfolk, Nebraska, volunteered with a group of Lutherans who traveled to Latvia and Russia to help with a church mission. There they met people with “no hope” in desperate need of spiritual, emotional, and humanitarian aid after the breakup of the former Soviet Union.
The Latvians begged Reverend Wilke to help them more after he went home and he promised he would; he was determined to make a positive impact on as many people as possible.
Wilke envisioned a train that would travel through America’s Midwest, picking up cars of donated grain along the way, until it reached a port from which the grain would be shipped to feed starving orphans in Eastern Europe.
Upon his return to the United States, Wilke contacted Clayton Andrews, president of Andrews Van Lines, a worldwide transportation company, and told him his story. Together, they founded Orphan Grain Train.
As it turned out, railroad operating protocol made the original grain train concept impractical, but Orphan Grain Train was born nonetheless. Within a year Orphan Grain Train’s first shipment – a container of clothing and quilts – was unloaded in Riga, Latvia in 1993.
Since 1992, Orphan Grain Train’s 22 regional locations have delivered more than 10 million meals and 2,505 shipments of humanitarian aid to needy people in 25 states and 64 countries on five continents. An additional 330 semi-loads of hay and forage products were delivered in 2002-2003 to drought-stricken farmers in the Midwest during Operation Hay and Grain Lift. In 2014, Orphan Grain Train built a mobile chapel with help from a grant funded by LCMS (Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod) Disater Relief division for St. John’s Lutheran Church in Pilger, Nebraska after their church as demolished by a F4 tornado.
The mission of Orphan Grain Train is uniquely dependent upon dedicated volunteers, many of whom have given numerous years of service for the sake of others. Since 1992, more than 3.5 million hours have been volunteered!
Orphan Grain Train is a recognized service organization (RSO) of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod (LCMS). Many shipments have been in cooperation with Lutheran Hour Ministries, LCMS World Mission, LCMS World Relief, and other Christian ministries.