Following the arrival of the food, the next big step in preparing for the food runs is packing the Rainbow Boxes. Boxes for Oljato and Navajo Mountain are packed earlier, but the remaining food for the other nine runs is boxed on two successive Saturdays. The first of these took place April 9th.
It takes a large crew to accomplish this job. That day we boxed 250 sets (500 boxes). In recent years we have been fortunate to have the Alta High School Soccer Team volunteer on one of the two Saturdays, so they were there that day contributing over 30 strapping young men to our workforce. Here's a photo of the team along with their coach.
Here's a view of the activity in the warehouse looking from the north end.
Regular volunteers Jerry and Louise Sedlevicius pass by Sheri Lund who was handing out the last items to be placed in the boxes.
Jan Snyder has taken Alta High student Alex under her wing to pack boxes.
A video production team is seen here interviewing Linda. They will be producing a video about the Adopt-A-Native-Elder Program which should be airing later in the summer or fall on KBYU TV.
This view, from the south end of the warehouse, shows the circle of "shoppers" with their carts and boxes who move around the well-organized perimeter from which each box is filled in sequence with the prescribed food items.
Beverly Benally offers refreshments to passing shoppers.
As the boxes progress around the circle the last stop is for the labels. Sandy Sanders distributes these critical items that assure that each set of boxes will delivered to the intended Elders.
Another active place in the warehouse is the table where the assembled boxes are taped. Sarah Sifers makes it look easy through her years of experience.
Although by the time the following picture was taken some of the regular volunteers had departed, the remaining veterans posed for this shot.
The following is a two minute video of the action in the warehouse. The video production crew is seen at work as well as the energetic high school students.
If you click on "YouTube" at the lower right you can watch the video at a somewhat higher resolution on the YouTube site.
Watching the video it felt like I was back at the warehouse! Thankfully when I was learning to pack boxes it was alot less busy. It may look easy to do but you have to concentrate to put the right amount of items in the box and be able to shut the box, so everything has to be packed properly inside. Roger had wonderful patience teaching me. Great to see Sandy, Art, Sandy, Dean, Virginia, Beverly, Sheri, Linda, Oscar and all the young men helping.
ReplyDelete