We are often asked “Why do you have “Happy Faces” on your bags of food, T-shirts and vans?”  When we began Jesus Was Homeless we knew that we wanted to deliver food to the weekly and extended stay motels.  After much thought and discussion of what that would look like we decided to deliver a “sack lunch” of food in a plain brown paper bag consisting of a ham or turkey sandwich with cheese, chips, juice drink, string cheese, granola bar, fruit cup, dessert item, mustard, mayo, napkin, spoon, scripture verse and a resource sheet.

We discovered right away that the “passing out of food” to the motels was a new and unique concept that was often met with “deer in the headlights” looks.  When we knocked on the doors and tried to give out a “sack lunch” of food, people were often hesitant to receive it.  They looked at us, questioning why we were giving out perfectly good food and what we wanted in return for accepting it.  Typically, it became a long and exhaustive conversation over and over again that “we just wanted to” and nothing was expected in return.

We knew we had to come up with some sort of “ice breaker” soon to help overcome this awkward silent moment door after door, week after week.  We decided to switch to white paper bags from the brown paper bags and draw a smiley face on each one using different colors.  Since McDonald’s has so graciously provided the buns for the sandwiches from the beginning we felt we could safely use the term “Happy Meal”.  Thus, when we knock on a door now, we present a sack lunch with a large smiley happy face and say we are passing out “Happy Meals”.