Kelsey is a team leader at Feed My Starving Children. She is pictured above with her family.

Being a Christian organization, FMSC leans heavily on prayer as a means to stay encouraged and make wise decisions. As a team leader, I have the opportunity to lead volunteers in prayer over the pallets they packed during their shift, and lately I’ve requested that volunteers let us know if there’s anything we can pray for them about.

We believe God cares just as much about each volunteer who packs as He does each child that we’re feeding.

This brings me to my story. Recently, I was at work doing the closing orientation for a Thursday afternoon shift. It should be mentioned that I don’t normally work Thursday afternoons, but I’d switched with a coworker so I could attend a family event in the evening. During my talk I encouraged the volunteers to let me know if there was anything I could pray for on their behalf.

A few minutes after the shift ended, a woman who looked vaguely familiar approached me. I walked up to her smiling, expecting to answer a question about FMSC or hear about her experience packing. But what she said next stopped me dead in my tracks.

“Your daughter was in the hospital a few years ago, wasn’t she? I prayed for her.”

FULL STOP.

When my 7-year-old daughter Betsy Ransom was born, some of the bones in her skull were fused together prematurely, posing an enormous risk of brain damage as she got older. When she was 4 months old she underwent a Cranial Vault Reconstruction, a complicated surgery where they essentially removed a portion of her skull, broke it into smaller pieces, and reattached it using mesh and screws. In the weeks before the surgery, a friend had put together a 24 hour prayer chain asking people to sign up to pray for Betsy on the day of the procedure.

The request, along with some photos of us with Betsy, got forwarded from person to person, and the result was that a combination of friends, acquaintances and total strangers were signed up to pray for Betsy in 15 minute increments from midnight to midnight the day of her surgery.

Not one minute of that terrifying day went by that someone wasn’t praying for our daughter.

The volunteer who approached me was one of those people. She recognized me from the photos in the prayer chain, along with the fact that we used to attend the same large church (which is why she looked familiar to me).

I stood there in shock, barely able to get out the words to thank her for her prayers so long ago. I was delighted to tell her that Betsy is perfectly healthy now. The only sign of that traumatic event is a jagged scar extending from ear to ear across her head.

The woman started tearing up, and through her emotion she was able to say to me, “My daughter is in the hospital now, and I was wondering if you would pray for her?”

While I won’t share the specifics of her daughter’s ailments, I will say that they run deep and are very frightening.

A friend brought her to pack at FMSC for the first time that day, simply to get her mind off of the devastation she was experiencing with her daughter.

We stood there crying together, two mothers who know what it’s like to fear for the lives of their little ones. I humbly asked God for the same healing for her daughter that she’d asked for mine all those years ago.

I was able to come home from work and tell Betsy about this interaction, and she has prayed for the volunteer’s daughter by name almost every day for the last two weeks.

No story is ever truly over when you serve a God of miracles.

The craziest part? Not only did this take place during a shift I wasn’t supposed to be working, but it also happened to be exactly one day shy of the seven year anniversary of Betsy’s surgery on December 22, 2010.

As a team leader at FMSC, I encounter thousands of volunteers and I regularly have incredibly cool conversations with people about the work we do feeding starving kids around the world. I talk often about how big the world is and how we each have a part to play in it.

But it only took one person to remind me that the world is also very small, and that we serve a God who cares deeply and personally for every. single. one of us. 

The Power of Food

Feed My Starving’s mission is to feed God’s starving children hungry in body and spirit. For the next few months, we’re going to highlight how powerful food can be in spiritual and physical health.

That mission doesn’t stop at feeding children’s spirits overseas. It extends to feeding the spirits of our volunteers, partners and our own staff. Follow along on social media with #FMSCPowerOfFood.