September, wow, where has the year gone?

What has Helping Hands been up to in the last few months?

We were donated a Braille Bible several months ago. Now picture this, 66 books of the Bible, several of the books of the Bible are two large for one volume of Braille, so several Bible books took two or three Braille volumes to include a whole book of the Bible. Now I know you’re probably asking yourself, “where is he going with this?” What I want you to understand is this complete Braille Bible weighed about 68 pounds. We have tried to give it to a lot of people but no one needed it. I was in the warehouse working on a shipment and mentioned the Bible to a volunteer. She said I should list it on TECH, “TECH is a medical mission association with over one-hundred non-profit Christian medical relief agencies as members” and HHM is a member. www.techmd.org I sent the Braille Bible offer on the list serve and within an hour, Global Aid Network asked if they could have it and would pay shipping if I would send it to them. They told me they were involved with a Campus Crusades organization at a Blind school in Liberia, Africa. I shipped it the next day!

The local hospital, clinics, rest homes and others have covered us up with Medical supplies. Because of the economy, our financial donations are off, so we do not have the money to ship forty- foot containers anymore. The cost of shipping a container has increased to about $4800.00, so Helping Hands has opted to spend more effort on Denton shipments which are quite a bit cheaper. The problem is medical supplies that have expiration dates really slow down the process, so we needed something else to do with the supplies. Once again, we utilized TECH! I sent out a sample list and told the list serve that I would like someone to take it all, about 6 skids and that most was in date. I received several request and settled on a group that was willing to make arrangements for shipping and would arrange for a truck to pick the skids up at my warehouse. Gleaning for the World is very glad to receive the supplies and will forward them on to Africa to a hospital.

I received a phone call from a local community college that asked if I ever received Medical supplies that were out of date. With the economy and funding like it is, they needed supplies for teaching the surgical Tech classes. They contacted us just prior to the shipment leaving the warehouse, so we were able to bless this class at the community college with some really nice medical packs that were out of date. I delivered them myself. The college teachers were very pleased.

Three Helping Hands people spent the Labor Day Holiday working on a Denton application. I wanted to train some folks so that I would not be the only one with the ability to fill out the application. I only had two people that came to learn but we were able to complete the application and e-mail it in to the USAID/ Denton folks. It took four hours to complete with three people working. That does not include the warehouse work, only the paperwork.

Helping Hands Ministry is joining a local Baptist Church on a mission trip to West Virginia. Room was very limited, so we could not take many with us on this first trip. The goal is to go check out the work, participate in a Bible school the Baptist church is putting on, help with food handout, HHM will provide school book bags with school supplies in each one, and we’ll furnish some quilts to pass out to the needy families. My wife, Donna, will be in charge for HHM on this trip and will set up a return trip for us. That way we can take a larger team on the next trip. She’ll find out what some other needs are and we’ll have time to gather the needed supplies before our return trip. Watch for news of this trip and the date for the next trip.

Our Honduras trip scheduled for July had to be postponed due to the unrest. We will still take this trip as soon as everything gets back to normal.

Helping Hands is also looking in to the possibility of having Emergency relief supplies on hand. We are still investigating what to collect and how to set it up. Any ideas, feel free to contact us with suggestions.

Please continue to pray as we seek God’s will and how to move. We need God’s direction, not our own!

Sincerely,
Tony and Donna Haywood