My name is Debbie Woodward and I manage the Northrup King Building in Minneapolis, MN, a humungous old warehouse built in 1917 and now home to the working studios of over 200 artists. It seems this summer has been a summer full of weekends on the road. It also seems that when we go on the road for one reason, we end up with supplies for Haiti.
In June we went to Omaha, Nebraska for our nephew’s wedding. The next day we enjoyed the chance to meet up with Roberta Vander Zwaag, her husband Kris and their five wonderful children. We had fun in Omaha and they blessed Real Hope For Haiti with a LOAD of medical supplies.
On Labor Day weekend, Dawn Scott made arrangements with our niece and nephew to get some school supplies, peanut butter, clothes and more to Real Hope For Haiti. She sent it on the Omaha-South Dakota express with our nephew and his wife (Nick and Emily Zachman) and our niece (Melissa Zachman). We picked it up in South Dakota while visiting family.
Once we had all these supplies collected over the summer, they were sorted and packed by a wonderful woman named Debby Smith.
When we had everything sorted and packed, JESS (left) and her friend Kristin (Kay) pictured above came over and loaded our trailer.
My husband Paul and I spent most of Friday paying tolls as we drove down through Chicago. Other than that, we had a nice drive to Anderson, Indiana. We unloaded our trailer Friday night because rain was in the forecast for Saturday. On Saturday morning we were able to meet many wonderful people who have been faithfully helping Real Hope For Haiti for many years.
Jeremy (pictured above) is another master packer. Jeremy has been to Haiti seven times and has worked many times on the piping for the water supply in Cazale. He is also on the board of Real Hope For Haiti.
On Saturday, we spent time with Jeremy and his sons seperating the mending kits from packaging. We had a couple of pick-up truck loads of cardboard to send to recycling when we were done. Real Hope For Haiti minimizes the packaging in order to maximize what the people of Haiti will receive.
We had more help from Eli, Austin and Carson. It was an amazing bunch of boys/young men. Everyone stayed on task until the work was done. They only stopped for me to take their picture.
Zach even gave me a short break to say hello to Deanna Pring (below). Deanna and I have been e-mailing after the earthquake and I was really hoping to meet her. Here she is with her husband and Zach. Deanna is one of those people who really understands the importance of taking care of the missionaries as well as the mission.
I don’t have a picture of everybody who was working that day. It was raining and we were in one semi-trailer working and others were in some of the storage units.
Maybe next year!
I want to give special thanks to my husband Paul for doing all the driving to Indiana and back in one short weekend. Pictured above is Paul and Zach mapping out a different route home (Chicago/Illinois you cannot have any more toll money)!
