S’more Fun Than We Could Handle!
March 28th, 2006
Rachael V.
When you think about book distributions these words are probably not the first that come to mind: hiking, singing, canoeing, barbeque, and campfire. (Well, singing might – but belting out “Life is a Highway” on your third trip to Wal-Mart of the week isn’t exactly what we’re talking about.)
Last night Elizabeth, Tabitha, Kevin and I were sitting around a campfire at Lake D’Arbonne State Park with some new friends - Kevin was keeping a beat on a bongo drum, Grant (a Hands On network volunteer on his first assignment) was strumming the guitar, Joe (a long term Hands-On volunteer based in Biloxi) was singing under his breath, and everyone else was making S’mores on a blazing hot campfire with hand-crafted marshmallow sticks. Inside the lodge, another group was engaged in a game of ‘solitaire frenzy’, deep conversations, and I even think a few volunteers had gone on a night hike through the park. All I could think about was how this is exactly how we should do every book distribution.
We sent everyone home from the warehouse at 3:00 yesterday afternoon so they could have a chance to enjoy the day at the state park. I should mention that before they left they had inventoried and mapped out our 98 titles, wrote out more than 110 order pull sheets, staged all of the pick up orders and loaded one recipient group’s car, staged a little more than a third of the shipping orders, and labeled and loaded six full pallets onto a truck.
In addition, we all took a long leisurely lunch, Neal (Americorps NCCC team leader) changed the tire on one of the vans, Janos (Hands On team leader) coordinated other upcoming volunteer events for his program, and Ms. Kay (Director of the Even Start program located on-site and the coordinator for the warehouse) arranged for the Northeast Louisiana Even Start Consortium’s barbeque for the volunteers last night. I’ll admit – I took a few minutes to book an airplane ticket to Guatemala. I can barely remember the last time that I felt so “okay” with everything at a book distribution that I could just check out for a few moments to do something for me.
Keep in mind….we didn’t start our day until 9:30. J
I can’t wait to see what today brings!
Rachael
Tuesday morning, 7:30 a.m.
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Peaches Embarcadero Says:
March 28th, 2006 at 10:43 am
I hear nothing nothing nothing about freezing temps, iron bridges to trucks, file gumbo, Sonic…. can this truly be Bernice? These volunteers sound amazing, fast, competent…books to kids! Hurray!!