Students use crayons to convey messages of good will on the boxes of packaged meals that will be shipped to hungry people.

The gym at St. Thomas Aquinas School in Webster City was built in 1999, partly in response to the need to provide relief for the small gym at Fuller Hall across Bank Street, where St. Thomas kids took P.E. classes, and as part of an expanded school and parish center.

Since then, it’s been a regular venue for gym classes, wedding receptions and funeral lunches.

Importantly, it’s also the site of an every-other-month mobile food pantry, organized and run by St. Thomas’s Social Concerns Committee, under the careful direction of Jean Ripley and a faithful band of volunteers.

At most of the food bank distributions, at least 100 people pass through the gym in a well-orchestrated sequence, loading shopping carts with food they could never hope to buy on their own.

It’s inspiring just to be in a place where so much local human capital is expended for so much local human good.

But 26 years ago, when the gym was new, there were only two food pantries in all of Hamilton County and they were open only a few days each month.

Today there are 15.

Could any of us have imagined in 1999 that so many of our fellow citizens would be unable to feed themselves 26 years later?

Fast forward to Wednesday, March 26. That day in the gym, two churches, an elementary school, and 200 volunteers gathered to take on world hunger.

Kindergarteners enthusiastically drew hearts on cardboard cartons destined for

Ghana, Zambia, Liberia, Haiti, the Dominican Republic and other Third World nations.

First-graders wrote notes explaining that they, students at St. Thomas Aquinas Catholic School in Webster City, Iowa, who have plenty to eat every day, were sending this food to people they knew were going without.

Senior citizens, some unable to stand, some even in wheelchairs, wore hair nets and plastic gloves, poured dry ingredients into plastic bags. Two staff members from Meals From the Heartland in Des Moines regularly visited the tables where meal kits were being assembled; they replenished rice, soy, vitamins and spice ingredients as needed.

Deacon Dan Hurt and Heidi Tesdahl, development director for the St. Thomas Aquinas-St. Mary’s Parish cluster, good-naturedly shouted encouragement to the volunteers over the general din as volunteers, organized in teams of eight, worked to the pulsing rhythms of Christian rock music.

How did all this come about?

For answers, we turned to two people: Tesdahl and Scott Norem, event coordinator of Meals From the Heartland.

Tesdahl went first.

“Every year we develop a theme for the school year at St. Thomas Aquinas School. This year’s theme is ‘we are the hands of Christ.’ We searched for a project we could complete in Lent that would teach the importance of service to others to our students. This is that project.”

More than 200 volunteers signed up for two-hour shifts that began at 2 p.m. and ended at 7:30 p.m. on a single day. Those volunteers included every student at the school, teachers, parish staff, and volunteers from across Webster City and Hamilton County.

Scott Norem will be a familiar name and face to many. He was born and raised in Webster City and graduated from Webster City High School. Today he drives a 26-foot panel truck all over the state, loaded with equipment and supplies to make meal kits.

He explained how the nonprofit organization came to be.

“We were founded in 2007 as a Lenten project of the Lutheran Church of Hope in West Des Moines. During our first year, we packaged and shipped 4 million meal kits. From 2008 through 2024, we shipped over 252 million meal kits to 45 countries worldwide.”

Norem went on to explain an even bigger organization — the Convoy of Hope — stands behind Meals From the Heartland. With headquarters in Springfield, Missouri, Convoy does what Meals From the Heartland does, but on a national scale. From giant warehouses in Atlanta, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., it packs and ships an incredible 625,000 meal kits every day.

But back to Webster City, where on March 26 two small churches in two small towns in Iowa, a small elementary school, and plenty of gung-ho volunteers gathered in a gym to help feed the world.

Imagine, now, as a hungry family in Africa, Asia or Central America opens a carton of 36 meal kits, enough in each kit for six meals. As they look at the note from students in Webster City, Iowa, they won’t be able to imagine that frenzied day in the gym where it all happened, but they might just think to themselves, “that must be an awesome place.”