Preparation for the trip

I guess I've waited long enough since the trip and now it's time to post.  We had talked for quite some time about making a "Shoes for Orphan Souls" trip.  We had done a shoe drive in 2007 & 2009 at our church, and in 2009 had taken a family mission trip to Dallas to work at Buckner's shoe warehouse.  We thought it would be cool to be at the destination of the shoes and that would be to actually put shoes on orphans' feet.  We looked at various trips to see which ones would fit our schedule.  The one's to Peru and to Vietnam sounded the most intriguing, each having aspects that sounded very interesting.  We had talked with Terry & Shelly Dykes, who were making the trip with us, and decided upon Peru.  At the time we did not know that the Vietnam trip would be cancelled due to a reunion trip to Vietnam being planned by Buckner.  In addition to handing out shoes, we would be conducting half day VBS at each stop.   We received the VBS curriculum and supply lists a few weeks prior to the trip, so we scrambled to collect the items that we would take with us.  We asked our church family to help with collecting the various items that we needed.   The Tuesday before we were to go, the Dykes came over to our house and we worked in trying to pack all the items into 1 check-out bag for each person.  It didn't quite all fit, so we squeezed items into our other luggage.  We were now ready to go and we couldn't wait.