Visting Family

Pam and I are in the middle of visiting family in Dubbo and Armidale before final preparations and heading of to Uganda via Japan on 15th Sept. I am trying to construct a coherent Ugandan Customs Invoice document for our shipping container - a lot depends on it being correct and presented in the right way but I am slightly hampered by not having a clue what I am doing ..

Tickets purchased!

We have finally purchased out tickets! No turning back now. We will go to Japan for two weeks then on to Uganda. In Japan we will visit our son Andrew and his wife Michiko, visit Michiko's parents (that we have already met on two occasions), and hopefully purchase a vehicle for shipment to Uganda. As part of our 'Japan' trip we are also going on a one week holiday with Andy & Mich to Okinawa - we are looking forward this break as life has been extremely hectic for some time.

Repacking the Shipping Container (pictures below)

On Saturday 6th August a number of folk from our church and others gathered to unpack and repack the shipping container we are sending to Uganda. This was to stabilize the packing of the contents for the ocean voyage and put items in the best order for Ugandan customs purposes. The shipping container has personal items/household items we will use while living in Uganda, computers and other electronic equipment for the Learning Centre, hospital beds and beehive equipment from folk in Orange, lots of donated clothing, books for the Learning Centre and schools, push bikes and many other items too numerous to mention here. The repack location was arranged by Peter from our church family at a shipment yard owned by the company he works for - he also arranged free transport of the container from the container yard!. Peter was also overseer and slave driver rally-er for the day. Pam and I (Allan) spent a frantic week leading up to Saturday packing last minute items for the container and Allan also preparing labels and working out a scheme for adding additional labels to items to correspond to the paper work that will be required. Greg from our church family provided and drove a large truck to get the numerous last minute items from our house to the container to add to its existing contents. The rain held of (praise God!) and things went well. The operation was finished in one day (I thought it may have taken longer). We wouldn't have been able to come close to doing what was required without huge generous help of many. A special thank-you also to the BBQ cooks and those who made cakes, muffins and other yummy things for morning tea and lunch.

Peter rallying the troops and giving instructions at the start of the day.

Removing boxes and other items from the container and starting the sort-out.

Unpacking 'last minute' boxes from Greg's truck.

Sorting and adding an additional label to each box.

Hospital beds, mattresses and push bikes (in the background).

Processed boxes ready to repack.

Boxes all returned then push bikes & hospital beds and finally my (Allan's)
motor bike. The 14 hospital beds with their heavy hydraulics were very
challenging and hard to manoeuvre. 

We will make it fit!!

Final photo at the end of the day of just some of the troops.