Day 3--They're Off, You see!

 

Day 3--and by God's grace we were done at 10:30 am! After cleanup we prayed around the truck for the children who will receive these boxes.

Packing so many boxes with a group of only 15 or fewer people at individual tables is something we never would have considered doing if it were not for COVID. And I had no idea how it would work. But our team actually loved it. In general there was less stress and it was more efficient in terms of time than our usual assembly packing party.

I figured each person packed about 250 boxes in a seven hour day and I'm pretty sure that's way more than the average person packed in a day by walking a large circuit around the inside of the church.  And we know these boxes were well-packed, also. That's a relief for sure.

At the same time, we realize we are losing the sense of community and the chance to interact with so many people at our large packing party. We mourn that loss, but we're grateful God provided this way for us to continue to bless children around the world. 

Each person packed at a socially distanced station and packed only 6-8 boxes at a time with their supplies on the other side of the table so they didn't have to move much. This helped with efficiency.

We had a list on each station so the packers knew what to put into each of these pre-planned boxes. While this was going on, we had three team members combining miscellaneous items for boxes for boys and girls ages 2-4. These trusted team members had a good grasp of all that was available and could hand pick the items that worked best together to make the best use of resources. 

Another reason things worked so well is that team members were self-directed. Those who were not at packing stations quickly noticed tasked that needed to be done to make things run more efficiently. Ed, who I dubbed "the sock guy" quickly started opening the plastic bags containing two pairs of socks so the individual pairs would be ready for packing. This was something we couldn't do in advance because many items were 'buried' in storage and unaccessible. 

Other team members took on tasks like breaking down boxes or stocking tables with supplies. In our debrief at the end of this session we discussed ways to make those tasks official jobs for volunteers in September. 

Sadly, we could have put 6 more cartons on the truck. My math was wrong when I ordered boxes. For some reason I thought 5400 would fill the 350 cartons on the truck but it actually takes 5600 to fill 350 cartons with 16 boxes each. They sent me 5500 boxes, thankfully, but since one carton only had 49 boxes our total when every single box was packed was 5499.  And how did we know one carton only had 49 boxes you ask? Only ONE carton of boxes had the boxes counted. Just ONE--because a team member took them home, folded them, and arranged them in rows of 5 and came out with an odd stack of 4 at the end. And we were missing only ONE box. 

I wish I'd ordered more boxes...and if I'd known how fast it would go we could have ordered even MORE boxes and a second truck. 

Still...the truck was just pulled and there are now 5499 gospel opportunities on the way to Charlotte. And...we'll be back to pack more in a few weeks so stay tuned.