Dear Emanuel,

Good talking to you on the phone yesterday. I thought pictures might better help explain my concern about why having the food order items marked is helpful on the unloading side of things.

This is a container unloading in Senegal in the road between our two dorms. The kids love to help and it is a fun time.

Each family has a area plotted out where we will stack their items. Some have outfits & food orders, others just have food orders. This was just a 20 foot container, but had approximately 18 families worth of stuff.

This shot doesn’t show it, but having the smaller food order items make great packing around outfit boxes and crates when there are small spaces to fill. If all the smaller boxes (food order) are on one pallet, you may run out of smaller boxes for packing a tight container?

This is to point out our concern of wanting to unload quickly. This man is not with us and kept walking through where we were unloading. We were unloading in the street, so we couldn’t say much, but it is always a concern. Being able to sort the food order quickly and accurately helps speed the whole process up.

The Matt Cooks getting their outfit ready to take home.

Keith taking items to his house around the corner. Again, lots of eyes watching.

I’m helping load Becky Barnes food order. With Cindy writing the Missionary name on the food order boxes, it makes sorting into 18 piles (especially for the kids) a lot easier and faster. Without anything to go by except an invoice list, it would be hard to get all 18 piles correct. Doesn’t even happen when we have the names on them, but it does make it easier to look through the items to see if someone else’s name is in the wrong pile.

Fun day for everyone! It is like Christmas! But it takes good organization to be able to sort piles quickly and accurately without anything walking off.

Hope this helps. I’ve talked to Linda about just doing it the way you suggest this year and getting feedback from the fields. I’m OK with that. Like I said, some fields have a nice warehouse inside walled mission compounds where they can unload their containers like Guinea. Just a thought, would there be a volunteer from one of the local churches that would be willing to come out to your warehouse and write the missionary’s last name on each item? This would check for accuracy, keep you from spending a lot of time on it and help a lot with unloading. I also feel it would help you pack the container tighter by having lots of smaller items for small spaces as you pack, but you have more experience in packing than I do.

Thanks for your time,
Stan