Members of the church were invited to sponsor the youngsters for every hour they fasted. They in turn were urged yesterday to call those sponsors to thank them.
The mood at the church was jovial, partly because the church's minister for youth outreach, Eli Foster, made sure to keep everyone busy with games - dodgeball was a particular favorite - contests, roundtable discussions and skits. The kids were even put to work, collecting trash from streets around the church and playing board games with elderly residents of the Ellerslie Apartments, three blocks away on Wyanoke Avenue. Occasionally, some of the teenagers grew weary, their energy spent, and they flopped onto the nearest chair, or even a church pew. Most slurped on fruit juice at frequent intervals.
Foster acknowledged that the kids in his church faced only minor discomforts in their brief forays into actual hunger.
"There's a huge difference in that they know that at the end of 30 hours their parents are going to fix them a huge meal," he said, referring to the feast in the church's community room that awaited them at the fast's conclusion. "In Chad, or Angola or Niger, kids never know where their food is coming from."
Crystal Abrahams, Adrienne's 17-year-old sister, said she had been so inspired by a documentary about worldwide hunger she and the others were shown on Friday that she planned to write a letter to her congressman about the issue.
"I don't want to be a regular teenager who doesn't do anything," Crystal said. "I want to make a change. I'm blessed that I have the opportunity to help."
The girls' 16-year-old brother, David Abrahams - their father had 13 children - said he, too, wanted to alleviate the scourge of hunger. "Even in jail, you get meals every day," he said. "If I want to get food, I can just go to McDonald's and pay a dollar. In Africa, if they want food, they have to walk three days."
nick.madigan@baltsun.com
