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Update 40
New Photos!
Dear All,
ON THE MOVE
As many of you know, we're moving at the end of the year. Not just moving our accommodation, but the contents of the entire 55,000sq ft warehouse! The land we currently occupy is valuable and the government wants it back, so they've kindly found us a new site in Tuen Mun, in what's known as the 'new territories' of Hong Kong. Actually, the specific suburb is called the Gold Coast!! There's a very swanky cluster of apartments and hotels as well as a beach that we will certainly be spending time on once we live there. The site we're moving to is a former barracks up the road from this complex, and it has been unoccupied for 7 years...meaning a LOT of work needs to be done to make it habitable and useable.
Teams of volunteers have been working hard cleaning and preparing the buildings and grounds to make the new site habitable and useable. It is a mammoth task! There have been some great things coming together, though. We have a long list of things needed for the site, like paint, electrical wiring, carpet, etc etc. Rapidly, things are being ticked off this list as they happen to be donated, one by one. Some are due to particular requests to corporate groups or other donors, others roll in unrequested, such as 30,000 carpet tiles that were donated just the other day! They should certainly come in handy, with many new offices to be furnished.
A TEAM OF GENTLE GIANTS
Ad and a friend, Sarah, went to the airport last week to meet an interesting group of people. Hailing from Pennsylvania USA, these 10 strapping youngsters were coming to Hong Kong especially to work at the new warehouse site. As Ad and Sarah waited for them to come through customs and into Arrivals, they perused the email that the team's leader had sent, with biographies of each of these people, aged between 16 and 28 or so. The list reads like the roll-call of a building contracting company! 'House painter', 'Mason', 'Builder', 'Carpenter' and more. The team came without a particular expectation of what kind of work they would be doing - they just wanted to help where help was needed, but they happened to have wonderful skills for the task we had. They're all from a farming area and know how to work hard! It was so great for us to see all that experience on paper, knowing how valuable manual labourers could be, preparing the new site.
Now that they've been with us a week or so, it's been great getting to know these 'gentle giants' - some of them are huge guys! And they have been loving the work, tearing down door fittings and cleaning air conditioning ducts and all of those jobs that you really hope other people like to do. The two girls in the team are having just as much fun as the guys, judging from the amount of plaster dust in their hair at the end of each day.
CONTAINERS FLYING OUT THE DOOR
With this move fast approaching, we are trying to send out as many containers of goods as possible before we have to close operations for a short while. The rate seems to have been about 2 loadings a week over the past few weeks, which is incredible! One of the most exciting was the container for Zambia. Our Zambian cook, Enala, couldn't wipe the huge smile from her face as she watched the goods being loaded in. Ad and a couple of other communications staff interviewed her on video about her first-hand report of the poverty in Zambia and how she felt seeing those goods being packed for her homeland. She kept repeating, 'it gives me so much joy, it gives me so much joy!'.
It gave her particular joy to see some computers go into the container to be received by her own family, who hope to set up an internet cafe in their small town to help give their townspeople access to valuable information and technology that is sometimes out of their reach.
WEBSITE UPDATED - new photos
Yes, we finally heard your pleas to update our website. There are three new photo albums online:
Around HK: A few photos showing the different sides of Hong Kong that we see each day. (Acknowledgments to Nick Z and Tim 2 for some of these photos)
Faces of Need: Some pictures from around the world sent to us by Crossroads consignee groups of the people in need whom they work with.
Work & Play: 10 or so photos of us at work and doing other things.
Unfortunately you'll probably flick through them pretty quickly, as they still represent only a fraction of the photos that we have to scan in, but still, it's a start!
You can see these pics if you go here: http://www.matt-ad.com/photos.htm
So long for now! Have fun looking at the photos,
Love,
Ad & Matt
ON THE MOVE
As many of you know, we're moving at the end of the year. Not just moving our accommodation, but the contents of the entire 55,000sq ft warehouse! The land we currently occupy is valuable and the government wants it back, so they've kindly found us a new site in Tuen Mun, in what's known as the 'new territories' of Hong Kong. Actually, the specific suburb is called the Gold Coast!! There's a very swanky cluster of apartments and hotels as well as a beach that we will certainly be spending time on once we live there. The site we're moving to is a former barracks up the road from this complex, and it has been unoccupied for 7 years...meaning a LOT of work needs to be done to make it habitable and useable.
Teams of volunteers have been working hard cleaning and preparing the buildings and grounds to make the new site habitable and useable. It is a mammoth task! There have been some great things coming together, though. We have a long list of things needed for the site, like paint, electrical wiring, carpet, etc etc. Rapidly, things are being ticked off this list as they happen to be donated, one by one. Some are due to particular requests to corporate groups or other donors, others roll in unrequested, such as 30,000 carpet tiles that were donated just the other day! They should certainly come in handy, with many new offices to be furnished.
A TEAM OF GENTLE GIANTS
Ad and a friend, Sarah, went to the airport last week to meet an interesting group of people. Hailing from Pennsylvania USA, these 10 strapping youngsters were coming to Hong Kong especially to work at the new warehouse site. As Ad and Sarah waited for them to come through customs and into Arrivals, they perused the email that the team's leader had sent, with biographies of each of these people, aged between 16 and 28 or so. The list reads like the roll-call of a building contracting company! 'House painter', 'Mason', 'Builder', 'Carpenter' and more. The team came without a particular expectation of what kind of work they would be doing - they just wanted to help where help was needed, but they happened to have wonderful skills for the task we had. They're all from a farming area and know how to work hard! It was so great for us to see all that experience on paper, knowing how valuable manual labourers could be, preparing the new site.
Now that they've been with us a week or so, it's been great getting to know these 'gentle giants' - some of them are huge guys! And they have been loving the work, tearing down door fittings and cleaning air conditioning ducts and all of those jobs that you really hope other people like to do. The two girls in the team are having just as much fun as the guys, judging from the amount of plaster dust in their hair at the end of each day.
CONTAINERS FLYING OUT THE DOOR
With this move fast approaching, we are trying to send out as many containers of goods as possible before we have to close operations for a short while. The rate seems to have been about 2 loadings a week over the past few weeks, which is incredible! One of the most exciting was the container for Zambia. Our Zambian cook, Enala, couldn't wipe the huge smile from her face as she watched the goods being loaded in. Ad and a couple of other communications staff interviewed her on video about her first-hand report of the poverty in Zambia and how she felt seeing those goods being packed for her homeland. She kept repeating, 'it gives me so much joy, it gives me so much joy!'.
It gave her particular joy to see some computers go into the container to be received by her own family, who hope to set up an internet cafe in their small town to help give their townspeople access to valuable information and technology that is sometimes out of their reach.
WEBSITE UPDATED - new photos
Yes, we finally heard your pleas to update our website. There are three new photo albums online:
Around HK: A few photos showing the different sides of Hong Kong that we see each day. (Acknowledgments to Nick Z and Tim 2 for some of these photos)
Faces of Need: Some pictures from around the world sent to us by Crossroads consignee groups of the people in need whom they work with.
Work & Play: 10 or so photos of us at work and doing other things.
Unfortunately you'll probably flick through them pretty quickly, as they still represent only a fraction of the photos that we have to scan in, but still, it's a start!
You can see these pics if you go here: http://www.matt-ad.com/photos.htm
So long for now! Have fun looking at the photos,
Love,
Ad & Matt