05-25-2008 Tent Drive

Dear BNU Friends,

The tent drive was a huge success! In less than 2 days, In less than two days, over 1000 tents, 2000 sleeping bags & blankets were collected from all the sites across the Bay
Area. The total weight was almost 30K lbs!

On May 25, Sunday, two groups of volunteers at the Santa Clara and Fremont sites spendt most of the day counting, sorting, packing into boxes and loading into the truck, then sent to the warehouse at Hayward, unloading all from the truck and then stacking the boxes onto pallets, shrink wrapped till ready to go. It has incredibly grueling work, and after that experience, everyone seems over qualified for a second job at moving company.

Many thanks to our volunteers!
At the Santa Clara site from 9AM to late afternoon:
Shi Yongxia
Cai Zhenglian
Lu Bin and her husband
Wang Chang
Zhu Xiaoming
At the Fremont site from 8AM until the afternoon:
Wei Hui
Teng Yun and her husband and a relative (a strong young man)
Cui Jialing and her husband (just back from a long trip) and their son,

A new member's husband, Mr. volunteer, forgive me for missing his name

I was at Fremont site, but am so sorry for not taking any photos for our team. However, I found couple pictures from Internet for Fremont site. See attached one with big truck shows Wei Hui and Teng Yun were carefully checking and labeling each tent box, the group photo has Mr. volunteer in red shirt in front standing line.

Shi Yong Xia, if you have photos from santa clara site, please share with us, thank you.

At both sites, it was really touching experience to work with volunteers from different groups. The ladies were busy on book keeping, and labeling while the men were responsible with nonstop packing and loading. It was as efficient as a well trained army!

Eveyone, thank you so much for volunteering and I hope you are well rested after the day of intensive labor work.

Best regards,

wang li

510 508 8399

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