Team 5 - Report from the field

We arrived safely. We had a lovely evening at Victory Place. Peggy served us some chili, and cookies and bread. It was a nice surprise.

On Sunday we worked on sorting and wrapping Christmas presents for the children hit by Katrina. That was fun.

Monday, we organized the warehouse, so that they can start moving things to their new facility, and we also unloaded and sorted Christmas presents.

Do not tell any perspective women volunteers that the showers are out doors MASH style. It was very, very, very, Cold!!!!! We haven't been able to go out into the areas as yet, I really hope we get at least one chance to go out into the area and help some people directly. That's about all for now.

Gail

[Editor's Note: Sorry Gail, when the new building is done, the showers will be indoors and have hot water ;-) ]

Thursday's Truckload

With everything going on last week I forgot to post about the truckload of stuff we sent down. We met Jim from Master Provisions at 7:30 Thursday morning at Spring Road. We paletized the boxes of backpacks and other items from Springfield, the remaining supplies at Spring Road, some furniture, and a washer dryer set. Jim has a partial truckload of Christmas gifts he's delivering down there December 20, and is carting our stuff along with it.

Thanks Jim!

Five people showed up to do the loading: From left to right, Robin, Jim, Karl, Randy, Brad and yours truly behind the camera.



Some people worked harder than others ;-)

As far as supplies go, all this stuff and anything else we could send will be distributed on arrival to needy families down there. In order to continue doing this, we need a warehouse/dropoff facility more appropriate than the Spring Road building. Optimally, a business that would donate some warehouse space with a loading dock. Maybe a storage unit. Maybe some better idea we haven't even thought of. If you have connections for such a place, please email me.

Team 5 Arrives!

Gail and Carolyn arrived around lunch time (central). Spoke with Brett on the phone and he said it was really hopping down there today. Good thing our ladies are there as they are the only short term volunteers this week.

We really have to be sending more help, as a group, as a community, as a state, and as a country. If you have any interest in supporting this continuing effort, please take the time to find out more and help where you can whether that be joining one of the teams we send down, helping to organize logistics here, or funding trips. This is a very frugal operation; a completely volunteer effort. Every minute of time and dollar you put into this will directly help some greatly suffering people in the gulf coast.