Unpackin' Potatoes

14 Jan 2013

I feel my age.  I feel old.  Every muscle in my body is screaming, “I need a massage!”  But in a way, it hurts “so good,” because what got me in this condition was serving God.   Literally, the hands and feet of Jesus.

This YWAM base is amazing.  It was the dream of a local guy over 30 years ago who saw the local fruit producers just DUMP perfectly good fruit because by the time it got to market, it would be rotten.  He asked if they could bring it to him, and he dried it – at the height of perfection for drying fruit – and farmers were happy to contribute so it didn’t go to waste.  The operation has grown tremendously over the years and now the amount of food it packages and sends around the world is mind boggling – all donated from various sources, and all labor, including those here full time, is also free.

Their attitude is that the food is just a vehicle to preach the gospel, so many different Christian organizations around the world request food from this place, but they will only ship it to them if the gospel is preached, and they pay for the shipping.  They ship a container full at a time, which costs thousands of dollars but will feed a million people.

Today, Kory ended up tearing apart some cabinets and resizing them to fit in another spot, so he was in his element doing carpentry all day.  His body held up fine, so hallelujah for that.  Kaleb and I were sent to the warehouse where pallet after pallet of “expired” instant mashed potatoes were donated.  I guess hungry folks in other countries don’t care much about American expiration dates and I’m sure it takes a long time before dried potato flakes actually go bad.  So Kaleb was working feverishly all day ripping open packs of instant potatoes (below) and dumping them into a huge cardboard bin.  They have a giant sucking machine that takes in different spices, powdered things (like the potatoes), lentils and rice and mixes them in a tumbler then volunteers scoop out the mix to put in a gallon Ziploc bag and that becomes enough soup for a hundred hungry mouths.  So, we’re doing the back work to that process, prepping the bins.  They aren’t sure they will be making soup this week, which disappointed Kaleb a bit, but there’s still plenty of work to do.

I started out squishing all the package boxes (above) so I could stuff them in the larger cardboard boxes, as the kids just threw the boxes on the ground.  So I was the clean-up crew, bent over picking up cardboard, stuffing it, then stacking it on to pallets to be sent to recycling.  Not much gets wasted around here. 

When I caught up with their production, I started helping rip open the bags.  I felt like an efficiency expert all day.  When I was stuffing the cardboard, I realized if the containers got turned sideways, the lid on the outer box would close and then the boxes could easily be stacked.  The other folks helping with this were just putting the boxes in like they stand up on the shelf, and they stuck out from the top of the cardboard box so there was no way to seal the box and stack it.  Once I showed them “a better way” they all started doing it.  It was the same with ripping open the pouches of potatoes.  Everyone was just doing one bag at a time and dumping them into the larger bin.  I just got a pair of scissors and lifted up four packs at a time and cut off the tops, then handed off the box for the others to just turn the box upside down and dump out the contents.  It went so much faster that way.  We filled five or six of these huge bins (below) today.

Kaleb was engaged all day in conversation with some college aged kids and he loved being part of their team.  He didn’t like it so much when I butted in his territory.  Oh well.  He even befriended the camp director’s son, who is about the same age, and they played ping-pong during the breaks.  It’s so nice to see him socializing!

We had a huge surprise this morning when we saw a guy from our home church volunteering here, too.  He’s been here since October and he’s the one that told us about this place.  We had no idea he was still here, as he also volunteers down in Mexico at the orphanage, so that’s where we thought he was.  It was nice to visit with him today and tell him all the cool things happening back home.

It was a good day’s work and I’m sure by week’s end I’ll either be fit as a fiddle or ready to drop.  Kaleb’s not complaining and Kory’s impressed with all he’s seen today, so it was a good choice to come here.