MCC Meat Canner

So I'm a little behind in updating the blog, and I'll get to the reasons why in future posts. But for now, I'm going to try to update a bit each day.

Right after Thanksgiving, our church is the host for the MCC Meat Canner truck which travels through the country to can meat for world hunger. It is quite an amazing thing that everyone comes together to do. This year they canned 29,000 pounds of turkey in 4 days. This is the kitchen area, where the cans come after being cooked. They are washed, dried, date stamped, labeled, and boxed.
This is the canner truck set up right outside the kitchen door. There are four men that travel with the canner for a year. Jay Dee has always thought that this would be something he would enjoy doing.

Jay Dee, and 2 other men from our church are in charge of getting everything organized and making sure the canner runs as smoothly as possible while it is here. So this means, that for a week, we don't see Jay Dee. He was leaving every morning by 4:30a.m., so they could start canning at 5 am. They aren't usually done for the day until around 9pm. This year, some people volunteered to stay later, so these guys could come home to see their families and get to bed. So Jay Dee was home by 7 most evenings. The following picture is of Jay Dee washing one of the big pans they put turkey into after grinding it.

Another highlight is that people of all ages can helpt at the canner. Ben was and still is so excited about working at the canner. We've been hearing about it since last year already. So on the day he had preschool, his teacher took his class to go tour the canner, and then after preschool, he was able to stay for the afternoon and help. So for 6 hours, he helped slide cans around to people to label, and he put them on the conveyor belt to be date stamped. He was one tired boy when he got home. But like all 4 year olds..."Mom, I'm not tired!" This being said with tears in his eyes.

This picture is of just some of the boxes of canned turkey that will be sent around the world to relieve hunger. Quite amazing!

Also, during this week, Santa and Mrs. Claus arrived in Henderson at the school to visit the children, so we made a trip over to see them one evening. This is the first year that Ben didn't cry and was excited to see Santa. Madalyn however, didn't care for them too much. That would be why I had to be in the picture.