Boxes arriving daily!

All the ordering done!  Now just to await the arrival of all those cool things we will be taking with us!  For now, we are under budget.  About this time I usually fret that everything won't fit or will weigh too much.  All the other trips made it ok, so I decide this time to just trust Him.

The things we will pack into 20 suitcases
are piling up in our spare bedroom!
Think they will fit?     

Every day another box came in!
Pastor was great about dragging them home!  

Craft pile!  Have fun Sharon!  You can do it!

Sorting -   Go home prizes for the kiddos!

After much deliberating, Pastor and I decided on these sling backpacks as gifts for the parents who attend the parents night program.  We will show them to the kids to tell their parents there will be a gift. The banner and crosses are taken from the sign in front of Ben's church.  Hopefully as they use them around town it will be great advertising for the church.  Once again, did the great pray-guess deal to decide exactly HOW MANY to order.


  I spent the morning today replanning our meetings to be sure our team will be ready. This entailed sending out about 30 emails to team members and Ben covering details. Shanna should be coming over in a few minutes to pick up her things.  Savannah is coming a week before our trip which is nice as she can practice skits and get caught up with what's happening.  I have a list of about 30 things still to do in the next couple weeks.  I confess I enjoy crossing them off as they are finished!  Each one brings us one step closer to being ready to go!

We are six weeks from boarding a plane to Africa!

Luggage tags for this trip and, while we were at it, a future trip!

Thanks, Emily Duke, for your labors of love in making these!!

Yesterday, I made my third trip to Fed Ex.  I had done much online research. and Sharon Templeton had helped too. trying to find a place to make luggage tags for us and have them individually numbered.  Sure enough, could be done but at about $5 each. Definitely out of the VBS supply budget.  Stephanie Quilty had made nice ones for our last trip and we believed the card stock laminated tags would surely hold up...but somehow many were pulled off our luggage.  The Fed Ex employee on visit two was helpful, they could outsource the tags to be laminated super thick - like a credit card - for about $.50.  I was happy for two days over being able to have the individually numbered tags and a great price.  

Poor Emily, while Stephanie and I were discussing this while working the moonwalk event, offered to take care of making the tags (that was before she knew she had to round the corners!).  She did an amazing job and what a blessing it was for me to know the job would be done and done well.  When I dropped them off yesterday, the helpful employee I dealt with last time was not to be found. An hour later they had figured out how to enter what I wanted in the computer. Then they charged me tax and it took more time while they figured out how to credit the money back and do it again with no tax.  

Why do they need to be individually numbered?  Everyone will carry one suitcase with their personal items and a second suitcase with our supplies in it.  We have extra luggage in our storage shed and will assign each person a 2nd suitcase to carry.  It is confusing to be sure we have everything at the airport leaving and arriving.  Now all we do is line them up numerically and voila - we know if we have them all or what exact suitcase(s) is missing.  We also have a spreadsheet of the contents of each supply suitcase so we can find what we are looking for more easily.  

Today, I'm thankful for Melissa, a friend who came last night to help me with the blog.  She was amazing and I understood what she was saying and doing!!  This morning, things are a tiny bit mixed up as I try to edit and improve......  Hope she won't mind a phone call....or two! 

It's amazing how God will bring so many from our church to work alongside our team and help us reach our goals for this trip.  I'm truly thankful!

Melissa - the blog helper!

LOLCS Fundraiser!

Kindergarten Classes

Look at that diligent supervision!!

We did a fundraiser through our school, Land O'Lakes Christian in April.  We've done it in the past for other mission trips and it has been very helpful financially.  There is a wonderful family in our church that allows us to use their inflatable equipment for free so we can raise money.  We ask the students from our school to donate either $1 or $5 to the Cameroon trip. For $5 they can bounce an unlimited number of times and have a snow cone. For $1 they get a snow cone or a bounce.  Most kids donate the $5.  During our school's field day event, we set up the inflatables and the kids come on a rotation system.  It hadn't rained for like 6 weeks, but clouded up that early afternoon, of April 19. We were doing two afternoons, the 19 and 20.  At EXACTLY the time the first group of kids, the little Kindergarten group, was to come out it started to rain, not too hard, but pretty steady.  I had to shake my head and smile.  After weeks and weeks of not a drop!!   As we huddled under the snow cone tent and tried to plan how we would do this on another day due to schedule difficulties, the kids came anyway.  The first kid down the slide landed in a bathtub of water - splloooooooooooossssss!  He loved it!  So we watched them carefully to make sure they weren't going to slip on the concrete and enjoy a concussion as they splished and splashed their way thru the inflatables.  A little later it did clear up, only to rain again at the same time the next day!


I had for helpers in running this event, our senior class.  They did a great job of making half and half (red and blue) snow cones and supervising to ensure safety!  Only Jared :) needed a reminder here and there!! Thank you, LOLCS Class of 2012!!

Making the crushed ice for the snow cones!

As each class came out I took some of the photos Ben had sent us and showed them to the classes and thanked them for their donation and told them a little about the kids in Cameroon.  The second afternoon a Mom came up to me who had heard the speech the day before and asked if she could write a check for the trip.  You know my answer.  She wrote a check for $200!  As the budget for this trip is constantly in my thoughts, it has remained such a big blessing to me, kinda like a sign or reminder to me personally that God knows our financial needs and that He can and will provide.


We raised $896!!!
Thank you, Lord!!!!  

Jump!

Spending Our VBS Supply Budget

Oh boy, look at the colors I found to use!! Dangerous, as I love playing with color!!   For the last two weeks I have been obsessed with budget and ordering.  I met with Sharon again and went over the craft items we needed to order.  We were so happy with all that we chose for the precious kids in Cameroon only, again, to be totally confused and disappointed by the fact that the huge Oriental Trading company was out of stock on almost everything we wanted to order.  We had all this cute "BUG" stuff picked out to go with our bug theme.  Guess everyone else wanted the bug stuff too.  I even tried to get some of the items from Regular Baptist Press (even though they are more expensive)...but alas, they are also out of bug stuff and not reordering.  It's only early May, what's wrong with these companies??  Spend more hours refiguring and changing all our great plans...


I do get excited about each task getting finished...each step closer to our goal - and with 8 weeks left to departure I'm working hard.  With each thing that needs ordered, I go to Mr. Nichols cool excel spreadsheet he helped set up and play with the numbers.....Let's see take from this category, and put it in that category. Then I bug poor Ben again for some more expense numbers on his end to see how things can be shifted and juggled. I spend a lot of time adding and subtracting and figuring...I guess I'm not really good at it!! 


This week, I've figured out the ribbons we will give the kids for coming to parent's night.  I ordered two sets with no date on them so that if there is extra, Ben can use them another year.  In Honduras - we ran out of ribbons on parents night and the nationals had to go ask the church kids to give theirs up...what a disaster.  We purchased more ribbons later and mailed them...but really didn't enjoy disappointing the kids that evening at all. Trying to guess how many kids will be there is a tremendous challenge as we don't want to waste money nor do we want children disappointed if there aren't enough prizes.  I really pray over the number to order (I'm not telling.....I'll let you know how we did at end of trip).  On other trips, the kids have totally loved the ribbons and we have a fantastic turnout that evening....  so 


Check -  the ribbons!


Check - plastic name badges!!


Uncheck - wristbands - lack of communication and our VBS crew didn't order our wristbands with their order and I fret over shipping charges.  After searching on-line I find closeout deal and pray over ordering closeout cheap wristbands and leave a note saying I really need these specific colors - even though the website says you can't choose colors on the closeout deals. They have shipped - I keep praying they were nice and picked the colors we need. I did get an AWESOME price of .02 each.  I ordered a box of 500 in each of the 4 colors we need, so next mission trip will enjoy the leftovers.

Jamie Costume

Clown costumes arrive at front door.  Even though it's not my costume, I must try it on and parade around for Pastor in the adorable lime green wig and super cute costume.  Call up Jamie and torture her with the fact that I have it - she is worried.  I smile!! I ordered a child matching one for one of the Sinclair kids to wear.  I will keep these in the mission trip box for future trips.  Each trip I try to add things to our collection that then don't have to be purchased again.

Check - crafts, go home prizes, skit items

                                                                                                            


Check twisty balloons - ordered  Spent time going thru old 
mission trip notebooks to find out where to order and found the amount we used before - helpful!


Work on gift for parent's program. This is what we use to tempt the parents into coming. Ben says he has not had a parent's night before and people often think the "white man" church is odd - so I want something to really draw them in.  We will show the kids the prize and let them drag in their parents.  I spend time hunting down wordless book keychain puzzles, but can't find them anywhere.  I investigate websites that perhaps could custom make what I need to no avail.  Find sling backpacks for under $2 each and start down that road.  Deciding on what to imprint on little backpacks is torturous to me, I email Ben and call Stephanie for her opinion. I make a decision and order. I find an unused budget item to help pay for it as my VBS supply category is now empty.  I do have to wait for artwork approval a few days.  it will take the company about month to make so I'm glad I did it now.


Almost Check - parent's night program gift!


Well, the VBS budget is empty, does that mean I have to quit ordering? 

Another blessing was that Kathy Hill was willing to make these cubes for us.  She made some for AWANA T and T and a set for Cameroon and a set to keep in our mission trip box for future trip.  To play put kids on 4 color teams, toss the cubes into a circle. If your color lands up you may grab the cube and try to get the other people out by throwing it at them.  Black and white are wild.
T and T kids here love this! THANK YOU, Kathy!!

One more provision by a kind lady.  Someone in the church donated these.  We will give them out to people and ask them use them as reminders to pray for us and our trip. The colors are the colors of the flag of Cameroon. They have been embossed with "Cameroon4Christ"

One of our teen's Mom is helping completely rewrite the  Regular Baptist Press puppet show so that it is more appropriate for Cameroon.  Our theme is Bug Zone - Transformed by our big God!  Bugsy, caterpillar, will be the star of the puppet show and voiced by Caleb!
Thanks, Lori for your help with the script!  

T Shirts for our Team!!

Wow!  Got the photos up and couldn't figure out how to get the text in.  The T shirts have arrived!  One more hurdle passed!  We have two shirts, the navy and red ones are for the two teen rallies. We will be divided up into two teams - red and blue!  Pastor Quilty and Stephanie worked with me on choosing layouts and colors - so these say STAFF on the back!  Guess that means we are important!  The others are for the VBS days.  Red, green, yellow, and blue as we divide each group of kids into 4 colors and play AWANA type games.  We spent a long time choosing really cool ink colors on those shirts only to find out the company wanted an arm and a leg for pricing due to the ink changes so to be responsible with our expense we sadly went to the same ink color on all shirts.  I was sad!  The members who are not leading a team of red, yellow, green, or blue will be wearing hot pink or dark navy.  The shirts are now all folded and labeled waiting for our next meeting to be handed out.

Forgetful...

Sometimes, I wonder about my mind. Today when I wanted to see if I could get the Visa photos and post up, I had lost the paper with the all important title of the blog and password etc.  After searching everywhere - even in the 3 inch Cameroon notebook with the tab "Blog" in it, the paper was not to be found.  I had to go on a guessing game, but finally 45 minutes later, got the password and found the blog.  Now to simply learn how to use it.  I've asked for help, but not many people blog...

That's the second time, I even forgot I had a tab in my notebook with information I needed.  I had pulled out all the info on doing the moonwalk fundraiser from my Bolivia notebook (and promptly filed in in the Cameroon notebook under LOLCS) and forgot I did so.  After searching and having a friend and my sweet hubby searching for about 20 minutes, I found the "how we did the last fundraiser" just where it should be.  I certainly do not remember filing it.....I remember seeing it on the desk!

Visa!

All the stuff we had to do!!  YUCK!!

I am breathing easier.  The Visa's came in on Tuesday, May 29 and Wendy was to leave for Haiti for a CWE mission trip on Saturday.  She will not kill me, as she threatened! :)  The page in the passport is actually quite impressive - while the Bolivian visa certainly did not look like a $150+ stamp at least the Cameroonian visa is full color and takes up a whole page!!  I had to call the company several times, I have no idea what the hold up was. They were well past their required 10 business days.

The $180 Visa is only good for 90 days - and we got them so early that we will be in and out of that deadline by one day.  The packet of information I had to send was over an inch thick of just paper.  One paper copy of each passport page, two copies of Visa application, two copies of Passport Plus application, 1 paper for each person of letter of invite by Ben, Bank statement and letter from our church for financial solvency, copies of airline itinerary for each person, Yellow fever shot information for each person, and two photos of each person staples to the visa application and 19 passports.  For 19 people, this was a challenge.  I kept missing a piece of information here a bit there.  What a relief it was to drop it all a FedEx.  The employee put it all in a box and sealed it with only the adhesive tape on the inside cover.  I looked at him and said, "Can you put some additional tape on the box?"  He said, "Would that make you feel better?" "Yes! that is a lot of work you have right there," I replied.  He just smiled and taped it!


God is good!

This is what got Fed Ex to Passports Plus!  Did you hear my sigh of relief?