Another great day with lot’s of headway!  When we arrived at the warehouse this morning they had installed our sign that designated it as an official “Customs Control Zone”.  This means that all of our boxes are in bond and have not yet been released by Customs.  Fortunately they still let us have access to sort and organize, but nothing can be removed or delivered.

A group of us spent most of the day sorting the boxes by family and region to make it easier to find them when they are either picked up or loaded to be delivered.  Here Tracy and Jonathan are helped by one of our drivers, Andre:

Our drivers and interpreters are excellent and always pitch in to help get the job done.  Here another driver, Sergei cleans up an old desk we found that we can use in the warehouse to sign the necessary paperwork.  We don’t have a chair to go with it, but a couple of boxes should do the trick!

We are really hoping that the official Customs release will come by Friday so that we can start deliveries on the weekend, otherwise we will be put on hold until Monday.

Stephen MacKinnon arrived yesterday and spent today discussing his plans for student projects with the orphanage Director and the teachers that he will be working with.  We had another crew of Canadians arrive around 5 PM today so our group continues to grow in anticipation of the upcoming delivery workload.

Tomorrow we have a special outing planned with the children from the orphanage which will be a lot of fun for everyone.  This week is spring break for the children in Belarus and some of the children are away with relatives, so it will be a smaller group for our outing which will make a closer interaction with the children possible.

Eric McKenzie