Project Trip 2008

You may not realize the amount of work that goes into a mission trip, but let me state that it can be overwhelming. I am just so happy this week because our batteries arrived. That’s right, batteries. They were the big hold up. Without confirmation of a delivery, our container could not be loaded. Until you have a date for loading the container in one area, it can’t move on to the next and finally to the ship. The day the ship leaves depends on those loading dates (did I mention you get a whole hour to load the container at your site).

Once all those things are in place, you get an idea of when the container will arrive by sea and by land to its final destination. In this case it is Kigali, Rwanda. Upon arrival it must clear customs. This has taken a week once, and four weeks another time. You have to leave enough time for it to clear before your team shows up; otherwise they have nothing to do. Well, they will find something to do, but not anything on the mission objectives list. With an arrival date you can then begin the process of finding a flight over for the whole group and the airlines don’t like maybes when you are scheduling.

So I am ecstatic that our batteries have arrived. They are the last part of the container. The solar panels, tools, inverters etc., are ready to go on board. The books, all 20,000, have been pulled by Books for Africa, and are waiting for the container to arrive. The team is getting prepared, and I am still trying to get airline reservations.

It has been a lot of work putting together the Koinonia Foundation Project Trip 2008, but I have the best job in the world. I have so many great people working with me, that I knew all along that the batteries would get here in time. When you do this kind of work, everything just seems to fall into place like it is supposed to. I just wish it would do it a little sooner at times.

Andrew Williams