Orphan Grain Train

Description

Orphan Grain Train is a 501c3 Nonprofit Christian volunteer network that shares personal and material resources with needy people in America and around the world. Grain Train volunteers gather donations of clothing, medical supplies, food, Christian literature, and other aid to meet real needs. The Orphan Grain Train movement is a loving response to Jesus Christ’s example as a servant and His love for us.

History

In 1992, Rev. Ray S. Wilke, pastor of Grace Lutheran Church in Norfolk, Neb., 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 Rev. Wilke to help them more after he went home and he promised he would. 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 his story.

Together, they founded Orphan Grain Train. “He came to me and asked, ‘Do you think something can be done?'” says Andrews. “I said, ‘Yes, I know how we can help those people.’ I never hesitated and it took off from there.” As it turned out, railroad operating protocol made the original grain train concept impractical, but Orphan Grain Train was born nonetheless. Within a year Grain Train’s first shipment, a container of clothing and quilts, arrived in Riga, Latvia.