Tuesday, December 19, 2017

Done For the Year

Today was the last day of work for the rest of this year. Next week the Berean office will be closed. We will not be working again until January 2nd, 2018.  We had so many wonderful volunteers today we were able to finish all of this weeks work today.  Below Gertrude, Vonnie, Eva Jean and Ron are busy opening the mail.
 Mom and Chuck were put right to work on applying the labels.
 Below Bill is answering questions from Marvin.
 Jan is getting the stamps from the cupboard. 
 Leila, Ron and Marvin were soon moved to the other room to work on stuffing envelopes. Robin was busy keeping everything running smoothly in this room.
 Below Bill and Marvin are visiting with Kathy about some of the letters. 
 We had a visitor today, Marie brought her daughter Laura. Laura lives and works in Mexico and has come home for Christmas. 

 Above and below they are just finishing up with the stuffing and sealing of envelopes. 
 We took a break for lunch after finishing the studies and request letters.
After lunch we were able to get the Bibles out for the week. We had a very good day for our last day of work of 2017. Thankful for all the help today and all of 2017. What a GREAT year this has been. 

Tuesday, December 12, 2017

Good Gifts

The program is growing again. We had more mail than usual and more Bible requests than last week. That is always a good sign that we are doing something right with this program. We had a brand new volunteer today, at least brand new in our office, Gertrude has been grading the intermediate studies for a few years but today she showed up at the Berean office to work.
We won't say how old Gertrude is but she was the oldest working with us today, hint...she is in her 90s. We were thankful she came as we were a little light on volunteers today. We were thrilled when Joyce and Jan came. Below Joyce is working on labels.
 Bill is hard at work on the computer while Kathy is reading letters. 
 Bruce and Chuck were kept busy with the mail and letters. At the other table Gertrude and Eva Jean were kept busy opening the mail. 
 Below are our 4 readers of the day, Leila, Jan, Marvin and Kathy. We had many request letters today and these 4 were kept busy.
 As soon as the mail was all opened and read, Chuck, Bruce, Eva Jean, Joyce and Marvin went to work on stuffing the studies. 
 Robin was in charge of keeping everyone busy and did a great job. We were able to get them all stuffed by lunch time. 
 After lunch everyone left except Robin and I. Robin got the Bibles wrapped and stamped while I worked on entering the Bible requests and printing out the address labels. By the time she had to leave I was working on the last sheet of labels. 
We were able to have all the mail plus all the Bibles that were going out today ready for when Bill Schick, the Berean director was due to arrive. He had a funeral this morning but promised to come this afternoon to mail out everything we had ready. We wanted to get these Bibles out today as just maybe they will arrive on or near Christmas for the prisoners requesting them. What a good gift that would be, the best GIFT of ALL! We will not be working on Wednesday as for the second time in 2 weeks we were able to get both Tuesday's and Wednesday's work finished in one day. What a gift for us, a free day.

Tuesday, December 5, 2017

Another Good Day

We had another great day at the Berean office. So many willing workers that not only did we get today's work done but tomorrow's work too. It helped that there only about half the mail we usually get.
 Above Bill is trying to look up an address on his phone from a prisoner that sent in a study with only his name, number, city and state. No street address, or prison name.  Thankfully google knows. Below Vonnie is opening the mail.

 Above Marvin is getting ready to open the letters and below Bruce is opening studies. 
 We had a new volunteer today, Benj works at Cat and Cat gives their workers a day off to volunteer somewhere. Last week Benj volunteered at the South Side Academy but they ran out of ceiling tiles so today he came here and was put to work by his dad, Marvin. 
 Marvin and Benj were a couple of our readers today. 
 When Bill arrived we asked him if he would mind making the coffee as David, who usually makes it, was not able to come today.
  David had a meeting while his wife Kathy went to TAG along with a lot of our other volunteers. We NEVER complain about TAG, that's where most of this wonderful help actually came from. One TAG meeting they asked Diane and I to give a talk about Berean, we did, showing the entire group what we were doing. We asked for help and help came in abundance.  In the picture below you will see lots of laughter. Poor Bruce got caught sitting in Chuck's chair. In his defense someone took the name off of the back of the chair.
 Speaking of chairs, below Jeanette is sitting in MY chair. When I asked if she would like to just stay there she quickly got up. We had a laugh at that too. 
 Below Jan, Benj and Marvin are busy at work reading request letters. 
 Bruce and Chuck are still chuckling over Bruce getting caught in the wrong chair as they are working on the labels. 
 Joyce was given the job separating the studies. That is Robin in the background. Robin is the organizer of that room, along with making all the copies, she keeps everyone stuffing the correct studies. 
 In the picture below these volunteers are actually doing tomorrow's work. They are stuffing, wrapping and labeling Bibles that will be mailed out today instead of tomorrow. 
Robin kept Chuck, Vonnie, Jeanette, Benj, Bill and Bruce working in an assembly line to get everything done by lunch time. We really do have a wonderful time processing the studies and filling the Bible request. Thankful to be working with so many amazing volunteers.