Easy Day

With Memorial Day holiday yesterday we only got 1 tub of mail. We flew through that and finished by noon with processing and filling the studies. Of course it helped that we had a lot of help. Marvin came up with the design in the picture below. Any guesses as to why?

 When the air conditioner is running the left side of the room freezes but the right side is too warm. Marvin made that box taped it up and today we were all comfortable. It worked perfectly! A couple weeks ago we got a letter from a mom of a prisoner. This man had gotten a Bible from us when in jail and did all 50 studies. He was so very proud of his certificate. He was released from jail and then died. His mother wrote that she found his Bible but could not find his certificate. Marvin mailed her a new certificate and today this thank you note came from her with her son's obituary. 

 David opened it and showed it to Marvin and Kathy. 

 In the other room the ladies are busy separating the studies so we can fill the second envelope with the next series of lessons. 

 These two volunteers are folding, stuffing and sealing. 

 The office was a busy place this morning. Marie kept the copier running non stop making thousands of copies to try to catch up from last week when we ran out of them. 

 Below it looks like Shelby is taking a break playing on her phone but we were all suspicious of her, we think she may have been smuggling out pictures of the workers. 

 Lunch was cold today, we had chicken salad, croissants to use for making a sandwhich, home grown lettuce from Marie's garden, lots of sweet blueberries, strawberries and grapes and for dessert pie and cake.

 After lunch everyone left except Ruth and I. We stayed to finish typing in the Bible requests for our Thursday group. We only had a couple hundred today instead of 400-500 requests.

We will not be working at the Berean office tomorrow. The next volunteer day will be Thursday June 2nd. and it might be a huge mail day to make up for today's light mail. If you have any free time we would LOVE to have your company.

Voted Most Productive

Today was voted most productive at the Berean office. Not only did we get the Bibles out, Scott was here from Brazil and fixed a lot of our computer glitches.

 While he and Marvin were working on that Anna, Eva Jean and Roma were hard at work opening the mail.

 Diane and Diane were hard at work taking care of problem letters while Jessica and Rachel read the other letters.

And then came the real work of the day. Over 550 Bibles were stuffed, wrapped, labeled and loaded. Check the pictures below of all these wonderful hard working volunteers.

We had quite an assembly line going with this job.

We finished at noon and had a nice lunch break before heading to the post office to deliver the van load of Bibles.

Another Busy Morning

We had another busy morning at the Berean office. Cindy, Mary and Shelby came to help. We entered Bible labels, stuffed studies, folded for stuffing and sealed envelopes. By the time noon came around the last envelope was stuffed, sealed and dumped into the mail box.

Above Cindy is busy entering and below Shelby is sealing envelopes

Below Mary is holding her trusty 'likker' and has almost finished her huge mess of envelopes. 

I'm always amazed at how willing people are to help with this growing program. Tonight we took 5 more full mail boxes of studies to grade. Please pray that people will step up to help grade the hundreds of studies. The prisoners look so forward to getting it back and finding out how they did. They love the encouraging notes left on the studies. If interested in helping out this way we have answer keys available. 

8 Boxes FULL of Studies to be Graded

Another big day today and by the end of the day there are 5 more boxes of studies to be taken to church to join the 3 full boxes from last week. HELP!! We need help grading! Please if you have any time to give the prisoners would so much appreciate getting their study back soon. Below are a few pictures of our very busy day at the Berean office. Below Shirley is showing mom a touching letter.

 Marvin L and Marie are working on opening the mail while Jeanette applies labels to envelopes. Mom, Shirley, Glenna, Eva Jean and Megan are busy opening mail. We were pretty thrilled to have Megan back. She has now graduated 8th grade and is out of school for the summer.

 Lila, Marvin, Dave and Kathy were the readers today. By the time they were done there was almost 500 Bible request that came in today.

 We were missing Chuck today, he was home sick with a cold. Praying he gets better soon.  Below Justin is labeling Bibles. Those will go out on Thursday as I didn't have any way to haul them today. He got over 100 Bibles labeled and ready for mailing. 

 Two boxes were sent out to the Galveston jail by UPS today.  Below Glenna, Shirley and Eva Jean are hard at work processing studies. Behind them Timothy and Marvin are hard at work too. 

At noon we broke for lunch. This wasn't just a snack, Eva Jean provided the lunch today and we feasted! Marie brought her home grown lettuce from her garden for the salad. Everything was delicious. It was hard to go back to work after that meal. 

 Shelby came today and was put to work stuffing studies.  She later posted the picture below

then wrote: This just breaks my heart- so many lost souls 
💔 I am thankful that God redirected my life and pray that he does these dear people too!
Below Jeanette is busy organizing the studies by number.so we know which study to send next.

 Aunt Bernie popped in to get some business reply envelopes. We needed to order another 25,000 of these. 

We had a busy but productive day. I am so very thankful for each and every volunteer that comes to this office. Many hands usually make light work unless we have a HUGE mail day, making us more than grateful for these many hands. We were not able to finish even though we worked until 3:00 pm so if anyone has any free hours and would like to volunteer I'll be there tomorrow from 9:00 am to noon. We have a bunch of envelopes that need to be stuffed.

Overwhelming Response

The word went out that we needed help at the Berean office today and the response was truly overwhelming.  We had just about every kind of help there was. Guys with muscles to help unload a pallet of Bibles that were delivered this morning, children to apply labels, computer geeks to get the laser printer working, laborers with great eyes to read the many letters, and many many hands of those that are retired to open and process the extreme amount of mail today. Below are a few pictures of our very busy day.

 Above and below is the Bible room. These volunteers are busy stuffing, wrapping, labeling, stamping, and packing them into Diane's van.  

 Below the study room was packed with volunteers busy reading letters, opening the mail, labeling the studies and printing labels. 

 One of the readers (Rachel) posted the letter below. She opened it, read it and it was so touching this needed to be shared. 

Our lunch break was just taken in shifts. The weather was so nice outside that chairs were taken outside to eat our lunch in the sunshine. We were not able to finish this weeks work. Hopefully I'll find some time tomorrow or Saturday to print out more labels. We got about half the studies done and less than half of the Bibles. That doesn't sound like much but the mail that came in today was another record. Three mailboxes full!

Overtime

Well we paid for our light day on Tuesday, today we were swamped with mail that had to be processed plus needed to get the Bibles out for the week. I've been ashamed of these Bibles that have been sent out the last 2 weeks but today was humbling. We received 2 letters from prisoners that got them and were happy, no, actually more than happy. I can't remember how the letters were worded but they both felt bad about our financial problems and were very grateful for the Bible they did receive. When I arrived Marie was already hard at work making copies.

 Joan had arrived with her crew of willing workers. 

 Above Faith is stuffing Bibles and below Justin is bringing her another box for stuffing. 

 Eva Jean, Edie, Diane and Roma had to work double time to get the studies opened and processed. There were only 3 of them and hundreds of studies. 

 Rebekah and Rachel came in to read the letters after the Bibles were all stuffed, stamped, labeled and boxed up to go in the van. These two were the only readers today. 

 As soon as the last Bible was boxed up Joan, Faith, Mackenson and Berlica worked on studies. 

 Mackenson and Berlica were in charge of applying the stamps to the study envelopes. 

 Fait and Joan were busy putting the labels on the envelopes

 We broke for lunch at noon. We were all hungry and glad for the break. 

We decided once the studies were separated we would quit. It was just too much work for too few workers. There will be NO WORK at the Berean office on TUESDAY AND WEDNESDAY next week (May 17th and 18th). Our next time working at this office is a week from today, Thursday May 19th. We are a little apprehensive about the amount of mail that will need to be processed that day. consider this an invitation, we will need HELP!