Brief report of the 10/29/2011 Recycling trip:
Lion Ken Gough and I enjoyed the sunrise as we drove up to the Recycling Center in Roanoke, along with 3300 pairs of glasses from our Johnson City Club and quite a few from the Kingsport Club. With a lot of rain but no snow we got there around 9 AM and began working immediately; Ken cutting and making boxes and me, along with six other Lions, separating and preparing glasses for measuring and packaging for world wide distribution. Before the day was out we we’re able to prepare well over 20,000 pairs, probably closer to 25,000.
It was encouraging to work with our current District Governor and his wife and more PDG’s than you could shake a pair of bifocals at, with all of us literally getting our hands dirty. Everybody worked hard and everybody had fun and we all felt a sense of doing some good, even if we did miss a few football games or some goings-on we may have otherwise been engaged in that day. Personally, there was nothing better I could have done Saturday.
As a bonus we brought back five large boxes of glasses (approximately 4,000 pairs) ready for immediate use and handed them off to Jim Barker, a Missionary with the Johnson City Alliance Church. Jim is planning a Mission Trip to Peru, South America in the next few weeks. He was delighted to get them and assured us they would all be put to good use before the year is over.
All in all, a good day’s work.
John Merriss