2017 Trinity UMC Mission Trip

On Sunday, June 11 we headed to Chatham, IL, for a week's working mission trip to Midwest Mission Distribution Center (MMDC). We stopped in Peoria for supper at Five Guys Burgers where Keely and Alex hopped atop bags of Idaho potatoes used in their endless French fries.

 Since we didn't take a photo when we left the church,  after we unloaded at the MMDC dorm and were headed to the grocery store, the 6 kids and Heather posed by the sign out front. (Top L to R) Keely, Josh, Caden (Front on ground) Alex, Heather, Grace,  Koyer. Sorry it’s a little dark--it was almost 9 p.m.

Heather manned the shopping cart at Meijer's. Everyone was given assignments to go pick up groceries for the meals she planned for the week At the checkout she suggested we each guess what the total amount would be, and the amount closest to the total would win a pack of gum as a prize. Susan won guessing only $1.99 over the total amount spent!

 The pony ride was free, so Alex hopped on.

Caden waits at the checkout counter.

Keely and Caden ham it up. Caden’s big purchase at Meijer was a $4 pair of pajamas--knock-off faux Teenage Ninja Mutant Turtles design.

On Monday after pancakes and sausage for breakfast, we headed to the workroom. We handed in our medical forms and went through safe sanctuary training before going into the new third warehouse to sort items donated from Annual Conferences throughout the upper Midwest.

On-site coordinators for this week are Mike and Karen Vaughn. They hail from Texas. Throughout the week they will direct us in our tasks.

First, we sorted items from donated flood cleaning buckets into bins. Yes, donated kits are disassembled to make sure all of the items fit the United Methodist Committee On Relief (UMCOR) specifications. For example, the bottles of laundry soap must be two 25 ounces bottles or one 50 ounce bottle, etc. If it isn't the correct item, it is redirected to other mission projects besides UMCOR.

We filled one of these bins with two layers of laundry detergent!

And these are the 5 gallon buckets we emptied during the first morning. (L to R) Koyer, Alex, Caden, Keely, Josh, Grace, and Grandma Grace. 

Susan reconnects with long-time friend and local MMDC volunteer Marilyn Markus. A local Chatham resident, she and her husband volunteered for years bundling 6 Band-Aids with a rubber band for Health Kits before he passed away two years ago; they’re known as the Band-Aid Kids.

Susan requested senior school desks for an orphanage in Haiti where Alpha Delta Kappa International teachers’ sorority is building a secondary school. They were finished last week at MMDC and await shipping to Dennison, OH, to go into a container bound for Haiti.

After lunch we finished sorting some bags of supplies that came in from Annual Conferences--school supplies, layette kit supplies, health kit supplies, flood cleaning bucket supplies. Then we went into the workroom to roll trash bags finto bundles of 12. We rolled 183 bundles, which equates to 2,196 thirty-gallon trash bags or the flood cleaning buckets.

It was 95 degrees when we quit work at 4:00. Heather and the kids made a run to the grocery store, and Susan and Grandma Grace had naps! Now the kids are playing outside while Heather builds a fire to cook hot dogs and ’smores for supper.