Amazing Grace

 As yesterday was a holiday the Berean mail couldn't be picked up until this morning.  Thankfully the post office wasn't terribly busy and I didn't have to wait more than a few minutes. We arrived at the Berean office 10 minutes early only to find plenty of volunteers already there waiting to work. Aunt Jinnie is back, below Shirley is reminding her of what we do as we process the mail. 

We didn't have a lot of mail today but had other things that needed to be done. Marvin arrived with another new helper. Justin came today to help. Below Marvin is introducing him to everyone.

Bill arrived to help with some of the computer stuff. Below he and Marvin are working on some addresses.

Once everything was done in this room the volunteers were put to work in the other room. Skip is getting the Bibles ready for mailing, some are stuffing the new studies and some are folding papers.

After the work was done we sat around the table with a snack and coffee and listened to Justin give his testimony. It was really amazing. It would be great if he would share it again so it could be recorded. We are so very thankful for each volunteer and even more thankful to hear testimonies of God's great love for each of us and His Amazing Saving Grace

That's Love

 We had quite a bit of mail today. We usually get some touching letters and some funny ones too. Check out the request that came in today. 

We never know what someone will ask. At 9:30 am everyone gathers into the main room for prayer and sometimes we share letters or stories during that time. Below Marvin was sharing something Ron Messner shared with him. Ron has been helping this inmate ever since he was released.

That's LOVE!

We were able to mail out 65 Bibles today.  Below Ray is applying the address labels.

Skip is entering the new Bible requests.

A group working in the other room. Not pictured was Chuck hard at work on separating studies, Shirley filling the intermediates, and Kathy writing letters.

Bill is explaining to Marvin that perhaps Marvin's type A personality could become more like Bill's type Z. Of course we all laughed at that.

Working With Special Volunteers

 We had another good morning at the Berean office. Before we could get started though we needed to be able to drive into the lot. Below Skip is shoveling the snow out of the way.

 The studies were processed first before we started working on the Bibles.  Below Skip is entering the new Bible requests while Marvin is looking up addresses. 

We really do work well together. Below Skip, Chuck and Ray are stuffing, wrapping and labeling Bibles while Vonnie, Shirley and Shirley are working on getting the first set of lessons ready to be stuffed into the Bibles.

Bill and Tate arrived to load boxes of Bibles and stopped in to talk to Kathy for a bit.

The amount of work that gets done in this office in a few hours is pretty amazing and I am very thankful to be working with these special volunteers. 

Replacing Envelopes

 Bill picked up the replacement envelopes from Wayne Printing this morning and brought them over.  Vonnie got us all working on those and believe it or not we finished the job! Every study that has the wrong envelope on (and there were thousands) now has the correct envelope.  Skip and Bill got all the Bibles stuffed, wrapped, labeled and stamped for mailing while we were working on the studies. No pictures of them working as I was working in the other room with Kathy and Chuck.

Below Shirley is getting a box ready to process.

Below is a short video of replacing envelopes. The bad envelopes were removed last week and this week we replaced them with the new envelopes.

We finished by 11:30 am and enjoyed the cheese cake for a snack before heading to the post office to mail the Bibles.  Thankful for everything that got done today.

 

Perfect Plan

Our coffee maker crashed. The coffee was made when I first arrived and thought my nose must not be working well as the fragrance of fresh made coffee did not fill the office. It was a bit later when the others discovered we weren't going to get any coffee to go with the pie.  Who wants to eat pie without coffee. Instead of stopping for our coffee break we worked .  I'll have to order a new one on-line and hopefully that will arrive before next Tuesday. The new envelopes didn't come today but we found enough from some of our stash on folded studies that we were able to get the Bibles out and the studies from today stuffed and ready for mailing. 

I was a little too busy on the computer to think of taking more pictures.

Below is a video of some of the work done today at the Berean office.

We had everything done we could do before noon. I'm very thankful for the help today.  Bill, our director had some bad news at Mayo clinic. The cancer is back. This time it is a very rare form and so far no one seems to know how to treat it. He asked for prayers for his children and wife. Please take some time each to to ask for God's will to be done in Bill's life. We are praying for healing but if the ultimate healing happens we will still thank our Creator, our Lord and Savior and thank him for His perfect plan of salvation. 

Volunteers Needed

 As yesterday was a mail holiday I needed to leave by 7:45 am to drive down to the Peoria post office, pick up the Berean mail and get to the Berean office in time.  There wasn't much of a line this morning so I made it there early enough to shovel snow, a small path from the Berean office to the parking lot. We had a lot of mail and not that many volunteers but it wasn't the mail that caused us all to work overtime.  Our last order of business reply envelopes were missing the bar code on the bottom. We didn't notice but the post office sure did. That mean every study and every Bible going out had to have the business reply envelope changed and we were scrambling to find enough.  Thankfully some of the older boxes of studies had been stuffed with the correct envelope. We just took from those and put on the new.  Bill came and took the boxes back to the printer. Hopefully they can be fixed by next Tuesday. Below are a few pictures of our morning. Kathy and Skip were our only readers this morning. 

Ray, Shirley and Shirley were the study processors.

Below Ray is busy taking the wrong envelope off each study so it can be replaced with one that had the bar code on the bottom while Shirley worked on getting the new studies ready for stuffing.

Joan arrived to pick up studies for grading. She also dropped off a book for us to read and share.

We had more than 200 hundred studies mailed out and 41 Bible requests today. Below Ray and Skip are stuffing, labeling and packaging the Bibles going out today.

In the picture below the rest of us were laughing as Skip looked for a scissors to start over on this particular Bible. Too bad the video wasn't turned on. Part of the package got stuck on the sealer part and it was so stuck that he couldn't pull it off. He ended up destroying that package and putting on a new one.

We all worked hard today to get the work done. Next week if the new envelopes come we will be working hard again. Hopefully more volunteers will show up for that big job.

Good to Be Back

 We didn't have a lot of volunteers this first Tuesday of 2022 but enough to get everything done. Kathy, Marvin and Skip were the readers, Shirley, Ray and Shirley worked on the studies and I worked on the computer. We had about 80 studies come in and 38 Bible requests. 

It was good to be back.