The Copeland Ramblings/

The shipment is here!

Back in September, when we were in Guinea, we had a nasty bout of malaria. Canaan, Emmaus and Debra… all down and out with it. It was a tough and trying time. We had only been in Guinea for 5 weeks and didn’t feel very settled yet. After that, we talked a lot with our family and decided to have a shipment sent over to us with some much need items and mostly with some familiar and some easy to cook foods. Stuff like cereal, hamburger helper, chips, canned chicken and beef. And also, Christmas presents, toilet paper holder, duct tape… the list goes on. We decided that a nice shipment would be a good idea, since the elections and the political status of Guinea was a little unsure. We thought having some good non perishable foods would be good to have stock piled incase of house arrest.  Little did we know that shortly there after, Guinea would fall apart and be very unstable politically. We ended up having to stay at home for 6 weeks. My family and church got that shipment together and sent off in record time. They sent it by truck to Missouri where the Christian Shipping company (Friends in Action) is located. Once it got there it was prepared to be sent to North Carolina to then be put on a boat and sent to us via a mining company that works in Guinea. The day before it left Missouri we finally came to the conclusion that we all had to leave Conakry. We called Friends in Action and asked them if they would be willing to hold onto the shipment (16 boxes) until we knew for sure what was going to be happening with us.  After months of prayer and decisions…. we decided to move up to Dakar, Senegal. Just before we left for Dakar we asked Friends in Action to send it up to Dakar. Its a lot more expensive to send things to Dakar, because we don’t have a nice deal with any mining companies… Oh well! We really felt that God knew what was going to happen to us before we did and he still allowed our family and church to prepare the shipment for us. So we went ahead and had it sent here.

Its finally here!! After 9 months its finally with us. Its pretty funny looking at some of the expiration dates on all the food… Most of it so far has been great still… Some of the chips have lost their crispiness… but other than that, everything seems pretty good. We had lots of pepperoni in there too. It all looks great still! Praise Jesus! There was also a bar of Velveta cheese (it was supposed to be an experiment to see if it would last the trip) Well after 9 months its still great! There was also a Boboli pizza crust… It expired last October. It tasted great! Haha!

Here are some pics of it coming, being opened, carried up to the fourth floor and enjoyed! There was stuff in there for two other families. But the majority in the big crate was ours. (at least 60%)

THANK YOU EVERYONE! YOU GUYS ARE AMAZING!!!!!!!

Hundreds of screws removed by hand!

8 month expired! Still good!

Enjoying some new toys!

The old TP holder!

The new TP holder!!

Organizing!!!

Check out the rest of the pics at flickr.com/n0rm_debra.

On this day..

• Tired - 2006
• Move Up Day! - 2006
• On Wednesday we celebrated Norman's 23rd birthday!... - 2005