Thursday, July 23, 2015

A Good Day of Work

 Berean had a wonderful group of volunteers this week. We had 5 new volunteers come today, Larissa, Jessica, Gladys, Barb and Dori.
 Above is Larissa who was put right to work on folding studies and below is Jessica and Rachel opening the mail. Jessica just found out today she passed her state boards.

 Above is Roma opening mail, her sister Edie also came to help but somehow her picture wasn't taken today. Below is Dori and Barb working on studies with Larissa.

 Marie came with Matthew and Timothy. In the picture above they are working on labeling Bibles and below Gladys is folding studies telling me, tongue in cheek, "we have to leave by 10:00am"

 Above is Chuck, Diane R, Rachel, and Jessica while Diane H is busy on the computer. Below I asked them to smile for the camera, don't look to closely at Mathew, that is not a nice smile. He'd better be careful or as mom would say, "your face is going to stay that way."
Once the work was done Eva Jean served lunch making us her yummy meat balls, veggies with peanut butter, chips then ice cream and cake for dessert. Once everyone was sitting Diane brought out the cake with candles and we had surprise birthday party for Chuck who turns 85 years old tomorrow. 
 Chuck now is officially our oldest volunteer and we had him pose with Timothy who happens to be our youngest.
Diane had her van loaded with Bibles for mailing but had to first go to Esther House to give a small presentation about Berean. Some of the ladies there are going to help us with grading these thousands of studies that come in each month. We only had 377 Bible request come in this week, a bit down from last week but that was a good thing since we are all out of wrapped Bibles. Emily is going to go to the Goodfield Bible Distribution warehouse on Saturday and pick up all they have then take them to Forrest for wrapping. The Forrest and Fairbury young group is going to do a service project and what a better project than wrapping Bibles for prisoners. All in all it was a good day.

Thursday, July 16, 2015

491 Bible Request

We heard the rumble of thunder off in the distance on our walk but it was off in the distance and we thought just maybe the rain would miss us. I left for the Berean office at 8:15 before anything happened but when the rain gauge was checked this afternoon it showed we got another half inch of rain. That was a lot less than the rain that came pouring down at the Unsicker farm. We had another really good group of volunteers today come in sheltered by their many umbrellas. We put them right to work on labeling the Bibles or opening the studies.
 Above is the group getting the Bibles ready for mailing, once they were all labeled they were stacked back in the boxes and taken out to Mark's van for the trip to the post office. Below are the mail openers and readers.

 Some of the work is tedious but the readers every once in a while will read outloud an interesting letter to break the monotony of the work.

 Below Diane is working on a completion certificate. Once a prisoner finishes all 50 lessons of the basic study he or she is sent a certifcate. If they request the next set we will send them the first 4 of the next 50.
Below Diane R is writing to a prisoner that is requesting his 4th Bible telling him kindly we can only send 1 Bible per person, they are expensive. Usually Kathy is our letter writer but she has not been able to come back to work since her surgery. Please continue praying for healing for Kathy, we miss her.
Below Rachel is admiring the coat rack Wayne and Lukie hung for us. 


We were able to finish right after noon and broke for lunch once all 491 Bibles from this week were all loaded.

Lunch time isn't just for eating, we have a lot of fun times too.
Emily came with me to help unload the Bibles at the Bartonville post office. Those post office workers are the best. They are helpful, friendly and don't mind when we hog the carts for the Bible boxes AND it has a loading dock.

Tuesday, July 7, 2015

Easy Day

We had a light mail day because of the holiday. We can predict that each Tuesday after a holiday weekend our mail will be less than half the usual. We had 3 new volunteers come today. Each time someone new shows up we all feel like cheering. Many hands make light work and this means instead of working late into the afternoon we can get done hours earlier. Pam brought her mom Shirley and her son Ted to help out.
 Joyce, Jan, Chuck and Shirley arrived and were promptly put to work reading letters.
 Matthew, Ted and Gary worked on one side of the table stuffing Bibles.
 While Marie, Justin and Timmy worked on the other side.
 Mom came in a little later and had to take the corner spot. She was actually put to work taking the pictures but didn't take the one below, her arm isn't long enough for a selfie.
 Joan arrived with her younger kids. Hannah was put to work with Megan on the copies. 
 While Mackenson and Berlica were put to work stamping envelopes. 
 The office was hopping and just a little bit noisy but so so productive.
We broke for lunch before noon. We could have done more except we ran out of the sleeves for the Bibles. We sent 25,000 of them over to Goodfield Bible Distribution earlier and now will need to ask for some back. We only had 186 request come in today and probably won't have more than 100 come in on Thursday. A huge thank-you to all who were willing to come help out for a few hours.

Friday, July 3, 2015

Post Office Troubles

Today Diane picked up the mail at TEMCO while I drove straight to the Unsicker farm to unlock the office door for the volunteers coming today. We had such a great group of people today.
 Above Edie, Roma and Eva Jean are working on the studies on the left side of the room while Diane R and Chuck read letters on the right side of the room. Rhonda brought Gladys in to inspect the place. She decided that yes, she could do this work but not today. Today Rhonda, Gladys and Lukie had a date with Old Chicago.
 In the other room Diane, Rachel, Marie, Tate, Willow, Timmy and Jenny were busy labeling the Bibles then hauling them out to Diane's van for transport to the post office.
 Wayne stopped in and was willing to bring the second pallet over from the machine shed to the office. The kids were able to unload those right into the office for stuffing. Marie brought the lunch today. Below we have finished the work for the day and are enjoying this fantastic tasty chicken casserole along with fresh picked green beans, carrot and zucchini muffins with chocolate chips, and chocolate cake for dessert.
 Below are the cars of the volunteers, when Lukie and Wayne mentioned there was plenty of parking we were pretty thrilled. At Meisters there was very little parking and we had to double and sometimes triple park to try to fit all the cars. Why at the new place we could probably have 10 to 15 more cars without overwhelming the lot.
 Diane took the Bibles and mailing to the Peoria post office. That didn't turn out very well, they were not prepared to handle such a large mailing with so many boxes of Bibles. We will probably need to consider taking them back to the Bartonville post office.