Friday, July 27, 2007

The arrival of the container...

This week we have been working on a very special project, unloading the container!!! We had a 40-ft. container (about the size of a tractor-trailer) arrive last Saturday. This was our second container, for we had a first container come from Lee's Summit, MO in March. This container came from Pennsylvania, where many different people donated all kinds of items to go inside. It took about 2 months to fill the container in PA before sending it down here. We received boxes and boxes of clothes and shoes, tens of thousands of dollars worth of medical supplies, about 15 bikes that will be given to the workers who live outside of the community and need to ride to work, furniture for Mark and Emily's apartment, and even a fork-lift! All 40 feet of the container was packed to its limit and shipped overseas. As far as a timeline goes, to send a container here it takes about a day to drive it to a port, 2 days to load the container onto the ship, 3 days for it to sail from the US to Jamaica, and about 2 weeks from when it lands on the island until it gets delivered to Harmons. And now that it is here, we are unpacking it! We have about 18 pallets of stuff stacked all the way to the ceiling that we are going through and sorting this week. Our store is more full than it has ever been and we will have an over-abundance of clothes and shoes for the next couple months. We have tons of medical stuff, all of which will be put to use once our new clinic is finished. As you can imagine, this is a HUGE job this week, especially as we try and do it on top of everything else we normally work on in a week. It has been exciting to see everything in action though, knowing that in less than 2 months time, all of it will be given away to this wonderful community who needs it.

Just to let you know, I will be gone for the next week. Therefore, the other summer staffers will be taking over and writing the blogs. I hope you are looking forward to some different voices on here. Also, be checking in soon for some new videos. The camera was broken but is now up and running again. I know David has some sweet ideas in mind, so new videos should be up soon!

One Love,

Lacy

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