Orphan Grain Train has been a great blessings around the world and our North Dakota branch has been wonderful. The folks over in Northern Minnesota do great work as well. The North Dakota headquarters used to be in my home town of Bottineau but ahs moved to Jamestown – Concordia Lutheran Church.
I received this plea on Sunday – it is a bit late but I think some folks are trying to help – I am passing this along from “Elissa Rosin” <ndogt9@gmail.com.
We have two large donation loads coming Monday June 8th ( very large
trailer full and a truck full of desks and chairs). The plan right now is
to unload them into the container as we have VBS going on in the church
this week and packing will be crazy working around their set up. My
husband and I are going to work on rearranging the container to make room
for the donations on Sunday June 7th in the afternoon. (As I type this my
5yr & 4yr old are coming up with a plan. 🙂 )
We have been blessed with so many donations, but not very many volunteers
to pack and sort. I know this is partly my fault for not getting the word
out and that when people have come to help we haven’t had too much to do.
That is changing quickly around here!
If you’ve ever thought about coming to help and pack and sort, *this summer
is the time*! We’d love to have the company, show you the ropes and get to
know more brothers and sisters in Christ as we work together to prepare to
help others! And it’s amazing the difference even 3 more people make. We
get so much more accomplished!
If you can’t come on a Monday, but there is enough interest in coming on a
Saturday let me know and we can get a Saturday packing day planned.
I’ll give you an idea of what goes on in those 3 short hours Monday
morning.
*1.* We usually assess what we have the most of and the grab a bunch of
it.
*2.* Then the sorting begins. For example, if *clothes* we make piles of
men’s, women’s, children’s, infant/toddler. And Women’s and Men’s get
sorted into 4 categories Winter/Summer Tops/Bottoms. Children’s just into
Winter/Summer categories. Infant/Toddler (up to 4T) we do sort into
Winter/Summer categories too. While packing we check for stains, buttons
missing, smells, animal hair, holes, etc. We make a mend/wash pile and
a discard pile.
*3.* We then fill as many boxes as we can, label them, tape them up.
*4.* The final thing we do that day is take inventory of the boxes and then
take them out to the shipping container to store them.
Number *2.* changes depending on the item we sort.
We do take a short break- coffee, water and if someone brings a snack to
share. We then take time to refocus on our Lord who gave us so much and
the reason why we do what we do.
Some things to consider when packing up items to bring to the warehouse.
