What a busy week we’ve had here at Gleanings! We’re right across the road from a tennis-ball tree grove! (Hhhmmmm! Turns out they’re oranges, NOT tennis balls! Sad!) Gleanings’ mission is to feed the hungry through the love of God! They do this by partnering with farmers who donate their produce, processors who dry it, volunteers who mix it into soup base and package it, and companies who transport it to places like Guatemala, Venezuela, and North Carolina! In the summertime, they get the extra peaches and nectarines from the orchards near here. Then college students volunteer to prepare the fruit for drying in the sun and then package it to send along with the soup base. Everyone here is a volunteer, even the full-time staff!
My job this week has been to guard the ladies in the quilting room. The quilting project was originally started to make gifts for the holocaust survivors in Israel. Now it has expanded to send comforting quilts made with love along with the soup and peaches. Here’s just one of the 35 quilts the team made this week. These quilts are going to go to the flood victims in North Carolina.
We got to pray over two trucks this week! The first one went to Swaziland in Africa to an orphanage. This one is full of quilts and other donations for the Ukrainian refugees in Israel. When a truck is ready to go, everyone here stops what they’re doing to come pray!
Here’s the field where the peaches and nectarines are dried in the sun. I’ve never seen that because I always come here in winter! I would NOT want to be here when it’s 110 degrees! Whew!
This is a beautiful spot, and we get to meet some really nice people from all over the world! The permanent staff includes folks from Switzerland, Uzbekistan, Latvia, Canada, and the United States. This week we met volunteers from California, Canada, Colombia, and Inner Mongolia! That’s it for this week! More stories later!