"Four High Pallets"

Monday

We had our first group of volunteers from The Boston Project today.  Everything seemed to go surprisingly smoothly.  In past conversations with my sister about her experiences working with volunteer groups at the multi-faceted Joe's Java ministry, it sounds like groups of volunteers can sometimes be a hassle.   When large groups come in to a small space, finding something productive for everyone to do can be difficult.  Fortunately  TBPM splits the groups into smaller sets.  We had four students, one leader, and Meghan, a member of TBPM staff, who also happens to be a Calvin girl!

We managed to have a very successful day.  We put half the crew on painting new signs, and the other half on taking care of the corn that had been brought in.  The signs are sky blue plywood sheets that we set out at the various sites to attract attention.  We need new ones, since some of our sites' times are different then they used to be, and some of our sites simply did not have their own signs.  We are hoping to make site specific signs for each site, as well as a few general signs, and some large arrow signs to point the way to the van.  One girl there who was working on the signs was doing some beautiful work.  The girl next to her was having a bit more trouble staying in the lines.  However, rather than discarding or redoing the second girl's work, the first girl simply outlined the strokes on the second girl's sign, turning her attempts into a beautiful, useful sign.  I think God does the same with our efforts: making beautiful our feeble attempts to work for him.

The corn that we got today was the most of any singular item that I have yet seen.  We brought back only three of the pallets that they had available today, and we plan to take the rest tomorrow.  Since we had no sites today, we need to help the corn keep as well as possible.  Many of the ears have a few spots of mold on the outer layer of the husk, so we went through, ear by ear, husking the first layer of the corn, and bagging up eight ears for a dollar.  We have a lot of corn to move.  Boy, this warehouse doesn't stay empty for long.