Working at Operation Christmas Child Processing Center

Last year I wrote a post about Operation Christmas Child (click here to see it). We (Daddy, Mother, Jeff, Jason, and I) just went to the Processing Center in Denver on Thursday (Dec. 4, 2008) and worked for four hours. This year we took a camera with us (Jason's new one). So here are some pictures.
-Beth

This is the break area, where workers can rest/eat/drink during their work time.

O.C.C. has two gifts for its workers: a new t-shirt every year, and an ornament with the logo and year on it. Here are Mother and I displaying the backs of our shirts, prior to our training and working.

Mother working (I think she was an inspector right then).

Jeffrey was putting shoes boxes into the shipping containers.

The lady in the green shirt was our 2nd Supervisor (Line Leader).

Me (Beth), searching each box for money.

Jason taking out money at a different line. At the bottom-left of this picture you can see a hole in the table for the contributions to be dropped into, after we removed them from each shoebox. The money ($7/shoebox) pays the shipping costs for the gifts.

Daddy inspecting the boxes across from Jason.

Jeff, Mother, Daddy, me, and Jason after working for four hours.

A map, with us working in each position. Other people were working right around us, whom we did not capture in these photos. One of the fun things of doing this is the fellowship with complete strangers from all over the country, young and old (mostly retired folks, when we've been there). Click on this picture to make it larger.

The Tan squares on the ends of each side are the beginning of this process. They are full of un-sorted shoeboxes, just as they came from the various regions all over the country. The ones that we worked on were from Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Colorado. When we started they had already processed over 218,ooo shoes boxes, and will do >600,000 at this processing center before Christmas.

M: Money seacher / remover

I: Inspector, who must remove banned items, which cannot be shipped, so are saved for local ministries.

T: Taper, who tapes each inspected shoebox tightly shut with Samaritan's Purse tape.

The Tan squares in the center are where the shipping containers are filled with at least 14 shoeboxes. They are sorted here to go into shipping cases for Boys or Girls, and for different age groupings.

The Colored squares represent bins that had candy and replacement toys in them. If we had to take out a banned item, we would replace it with a donated toy. Every box was supposed to have candy in it, so we added candy if there wasn't any in each box.