Donation Sorting

Before we left for Africa, I spent a very frustrating week trying to get all the donations (shoes, clothes, medical supplies, school supplies and soccer balls) shipped on the plane with us. As a result of September 11, the rules in place make it nearly impossible to ship cargo on the same aircraft you are a passenger on. We decided to pay for a few extra bags and leave any donations we couldn't take with us for a cargo container or the next trip. We took everything we had to the packing meeting fully expecting to take more than half of it back home to store. It seemed to go quickly an before you knew it everything was packed. Everything! What made it even more amazing was that Monica and I had not even packed a second (or third) bag. When packing the donations, the idea was to put as many different things in each bag as you could so customs would not think you were selling large quantities of the same item. We spent much of the first day unpacking and sorting donations. This is a picture of the medical supply section above is one of the three or four clothing sections.After a short time it quickly became apparant that there was no possible way that all of these donations could have fit in the bags we brought. The stuff just expanded into a number of large piles at different stations. It was an amazing experience to look around and marvel.
The Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim donated a lot of jerseys which the kids all loved even though they didn't know anything about the Angels.