MMDC — #3 Big Shipment Day

This week we are working with 2 other churches from Iowa in Gladbrook and Cedar Falls. Originally, Trinity in Charles City had signed up for 16 people, but only 4 committed, so Jay Culter contacted other churches in NE Iowa. There are 3 from Gladbrook and 4 from Cedar Falls First UMC for a total of eleven who are staying on campus. In addition, each day there are volunteers from the greater Springfield, IL, area.

Here is the group: (row 1) Carolyn and Luba (Gladbrook), Susan and Karen (Charles City), Laurene, Lisa, and Bobbette from Cedar Falls, (row 2) Steve (Gladbrook), Chris (Cedar Falls), Carl and Jay (Charles City}.

Carl and Jay assembled 3 of the 9 the school desks made by members of Trinity UMC in Charles City. This is a quality control measure to make sure that everything was cut correctly. They screwed and bolted all of the desks together to make sure they were aligned properly—and with minor adjustments they were just perfect! (Guess what they’ll be doing tomorrow...)

Meanwhile Susan and Karen and Laurene worked ALL DAY assembling one-handled teacher school bags for Haiti. These were cut out and serged together at MMDC by other volunteers. The three of them hemmed the top, and then they attached and reinforced the handles. 

It gave them quite a sense of accomplishment when they counted up at the end of the day and discovered that they had completed 60.

Today is the day the big shipment to Central America was loaded into 3 semi-trailers. All of the alleyways in the first warehouse were full of supplies for this shipment. All of the staff and volunteers gathered and joined hands to “pray out” the load.

Warehouse worker and forklift operator Brad Walton explains that this is the largest single shipment ever from MMDC. It will go to South Com US Air Command in Norfolk, VA, and then will go on the USNS COMFORT. The ship will be at sea for several weeks. Items for Haiti (the last port of call) were loaded into the container first today (first on, last off). Two more trailers were loaded next, and almost everything on the floor of the warehouse was shipped out.

 Then Brad shooed everyone out of the ware house so that he could load the trailer with the forklift.

So we continue to work on Personal Dignity Kits. The other members of the team from Gladbrook and Cedar Falls are working on an order for 500 PDKs. They completed 264 today.

Stacked high on shelves in the warehouse remain flood cleaning buckets, ready for use when a call comes this spring. These will go to disasters within the United States because of their weight.

The second warehouse has donated sewing machines and medical equipment and wood for school desks. Bicycles are also repaired for use by pastors in other countries.

The work continues at MMDC on a third warehouse. Some of the Cedar Falls volunteers helped set bolts today for the doorways. 

The work of the Lord continues. There is an order for 5,000 school bags as well as the 500 PDKs. Two of the bins for one-handled school bags are empty. It’s strange to see the inventory list on the side of a bin at ZERO when it previously held 1,500.

If you are following our journey and would like to help, we will be sending more supplies to the Iowa Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church in June. Contact any of the Charles City volunteers: Jay and Karen Cutler & Carl and Susan Jacob. 

We will accept your financial donations, or we will provide you with patterns to sew hospital gowns, layette gowns, or receiving blankets, or you may join us at our next Stitching for Missions Day in April. UMCOR has lists of supplies that you may donate for school kits, health kits, birthing kits, layette kits, sewing kits, and cleaning buckets. Many hands make light work...