I am sure we will not be able to keep this rate of posting up. We got off early tonight and are just relaxing after a day starting at 6:30 am to Welfare square and the Humanitarian Sort Center. We heard and saw so much of this living miracle and the best kept secret in the church. Well I am about to let some of the secret out. The statistics of the amount of money, goods and services delivered by the church to needy people world wide are huge and I will not divulge any but one. We produced a mixture the Africans use to sustain life call Atima. In is the pouches on the left. Africa population was dieing of hunger and asked us to produce this for them. They start from scratch with milk from our dairy of 300 cows in southern UTah. They delivered this to Africa with no cost to africa and over a short period of time they estimate that this effort has saved over 5 million people from just this mix.
Another story. A few years ago the church put together 7 train car loads of emergency supplies for Uraguay. It was ready to go but no way to get it there. A lady stopped in the center andasked if there was somehting she could do to help. The manager told her we just needed a way to dleiver the goods. She left and called back two hours latter and said that her husband, a Colonel in the USA, would have a C-1 cargo plane ready to go as soon as we could deliver the stuff to the base north of Salt Lake 1 hour. She had no idea that is what we needed she had just stopped in to offer her own service in the packaging of goods.
We learned allot about how to work with the needy and the poor. How to not judge them and were taught new perspectives on the idea of charity.
This grainairy is 178 feet tall and was poured as one continuous pour in 10 days by hand and wheelbarrow. It along with 148 others store over 8.5 million bushels of wheat. The church owns hundreds of other farms and ranches that are operated for profit that could and would be dedicated to humanitarian efforts in a natural disaster.
.The center also hires about 256 people to run the center. Mostly all non memebers and also mostly international. They put them through training and coaching to get them ready for the job market and then place about 2/3 of them each year in regular jobs.
These are the wheel chairs that are delivered world wide and which we will take delivery off when we get there.
We saw a 11 minute film that illustrates how our efforts are recieved around the world. In it is Lynn!! Showing him digging out bodies in El Salvador when he first got there. We were so ....humby grateful!!
I am using this format as one of the mission journals. So sorry if all these posts are a bother to you I really don't expect anyone to read any or all of it for sure. I am told once I am done it can be printed up in a real nice format.
Thanks for reading if you did. Let me know if you have any comments. I probably will not continue to let everyone know by email that there is a post so you might consider signing up to follow it if you want.
We are totally ready to get out there although we are sure having great experiences right now!! I just wish it was possible to tell you everything that happens. But it probably wouldn't mean quite the same to you as it does to us.
Love Bill & Ellen
5 comments:
oh wow.. I am so glad you are blogging.. I am so glad you are getting to see and experience these things.. I wish I could hear more of the details.. I know there are a lot more! :) thanks for sharing.. I bet that was pretty sweet to see lynn on the video.. love you.
What I have read is very interesting. I have had some leg problems and if you were here i would ask you what i should do, besides keep my feet higher than my head. I have cut salt from my diet and that's ok. I take a walk up the hill, i hold on to a piece of furniture and take 500 steps. When all else i take two ibrofen or tylenol. If i still can't sleep because of leg misery i take two more pain pills. Patty, Keith and especailly Rebekah, are very understanding and take good care of me. The weather has been mostly dry and pleasant. We often get to see Carly and her family. We are herding ducks, Bryn and Alex are expecting a baby any minute. We enjoy your correspondence, so please keep it up.
Love Alice and Rebekah
WOW! What an experience you had today. And we don't even have all the details. I'm sure it was just incredibly amazing. Cool that you saw Lynn in the video. Sleep well. Love you, Anna
so good to hear of your adventure!! i think of you often and am always glad to see a new post!! i still need to look into skype (sp?) keep up the good work-learning is work right:-)
much love-jenny
Isn't it wonderful to belong to a church that does so much service for others throughout the world and never feels the need to toot it's own horn. That IS Christ-like service. You two are going to be awesome while serving your mission.
We still miss you guys.
Hugs,
Connie
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