Day Six: Packed like Sardines

This blog is coming from a bruised and battered blue team. Emily and Beccy were both hit down with tonsillitis but with constant prayer and Nurse Smoker’s attention, they are making a speedy recovery. This morning we broke up into two groups. The yellow group headed off to Agono to do a feeding with Mr Martens and the blue and red groups worked on the construction site. As usual, the feeding consisted of handing out food, balloon animals, pipe cleaner toys and loom bands. There weren’t as many people there as was expected, but the team focused their love and attention on the kids that did come.  Due to this, some amazing friendships were formed. The construction work today was physically challenging as we mixed, poured and carried cement for the second storey floor/first storey roof of one of the houses we are working on.

After cleaning up and having lunch, we all walked over to the Cuatro Christian School and presented the principal with the money raised from the soccer tournament. The impact of that money in that school will be significant, and made the team realise the worth of the work we do. Even something like a soccer tournament can have such a long lasting impact on the community we are serving. We headed back to YMC and prepared to shop for supplies for Christmas hampers to be given to a trash mountain society. The money for this shopping was gained from the Reho Food Tech Street Food stalls and the silent auction at the quiz night. Also we were challenged to donation from our own spending money. From the nineteen kids attending the trip, a whopping $720 was raised and used to purchase more supplies. The team all felt ecstatic to be seeing the money, earned over the past year due to our hard work and time, being used to change these people’s lives.

After collecting the money we headed out to a bulk and buy store where we bought enough supplies for 150 families in the community. These supplies consisted of food, toiletries, cleaning products and containers. This will support these families that live on less that a dollar a week. After we bought these supplies we had to pack it in the bus and also get us in to the bus as well. Once again we were stuck in another sardine ride. It was exciting to get to cram into the bus with all the supplies and know that what we bought was so much and that, which would impact a community for Christmas. Later on in the night after the devotions, games of chasey and hide-and-seek at the children’s home; we sorted the supplies into Christmas hampers and are to be handed out this Friday afternoon to the families in the Trash Mountain community called San Mateo and the kids from Journey for Hope tomorrow night. A long, hot night of sorting, re-sorting and re-re-sorting followed, but ended in lots of very good looking hampers!

Shopping List
9 x 50kg Rice Bags (450 kg)
30 x 1kg Brown Sugar (30 kg)
750 x 25g packet of Coffee + sugar + creamer (18.75 kg)
300 x 155g tin of Sardines (46.5 kg)
150 x 1kg packet of Spaghetti (150 kg)
150 x 1kg Tomatos Pasta Sauce (150 kg)
150 x 10 packets of Tiger Biscuits (sweet biscuits) (31.5kg)
150 x 90g Toothpaste (13.5kg)
300 x Toothbrush
150 x 200ml Vinegar  (30L)
150 x 200ml Soy Sauce (30L)
150 x 400g Laundry Soap Bar (60kg)
150 x 90ml Shampoo (13.5L)
300 x bars of Soap (16.5kg)
100 x round Laundry Bucket
350 x large ziplock bags
200 x sandwich ziplock bags
Totalling over 2 tonne