Once upon a time Gayla and I were young in the ministry. We had a lot of things we wanted to do for the Lord and there never seemed to be enough in the offering pan for those desires. So we prayed. Gayla felt the Lord told us our answer was in the weeds and bushes. This became a lifetime of digging out the trash and gaining the treasure!
The past two years we have been systematizing our endeavors so that someone else might be able to follow in the blessings in other locations. Pastors, Ministers and Missionaries all over are always interesting in seeing how others do things. Many systems we have in place are able to be duplicated but one area was by and largely ignored by our warehousing systems.
The recyclable metal scrap was a pain to our program. Old washers and dryers, broken strollers, lamps, you fill in the blank and we have it. When the donations come in from the boxes , businesses and houses there is always the bent up metal, aluminum and copper scrap. Our solution was to let "junk men" come by and pick up the scrap.
These men are good men. Friends of mine. I know the scrap business well. About 15 years ago car bodies were brought in, prepared, swung from a tree and loaded onto a semi and I drove the truck to the shredder and came home to give to missions, continue building or go on an evangelistic endeavor. But I outgrew it..... Or, I shut God's door of blessing to our work you could say! So, these "junk men" were quite happy to haul away our leftovers! Their work was rewarded and the blessing they received was not begrudged.
Last week, while traveling, we stopped in Atlanta to visit the in laws, Pastor Latta, told me he had a great desire to pay off the church he currently pastors. They have had garage sales, tent sales, sold a motorcycle and are still looking for ways. I suggested a scrap drive. Having no current idea of how the scrap business was going it was decided that we would come home and set our warehouse into a duplicable, recycling center. Then we might be able to know whether what are suggesting is worth in or not!
Loading up the ferrous metal is the first step and a couple a loads were hauled today. When working on a system we always go through each step and make a plan to be followed by staff. We find this is a way to 'catch and release' the vision! The scrap yard was a blast from the past today and after prices were agreed on the scrap was weighed, removed and will go through the shredder, be loaded on a barge and go to the steel mill to be made into new products.
The next step, after cleaning out the piles of scrap lying around, will be to set up bins in a section of the warehouses where non-ferrous metals can be gathered for a much larger price that the base metals. It is a responsible thing for us to do and I believe it will be a success. From a conservative figure the loss of revenue in our operation from a passive action has exceeded $100,000.00 in the 10 years we have been here! Now that's a wake up call for trash to treasure!
