Deployment diary day 12: Friday 28th January

Today was another one of those days when I was really proud to be a Salvationist. We have a great team here - but the official team is only part of the force moving The Salvation Army's programme forward. We have a whole host of volunteers who work alongside us. Links with the corps in the Island of Turks and Cacos resulted in a team of fire fighters and an engineer coming to work with us. Shona, their engineer, has worked unstintingly - particularly in recent days since we were appointed as the official managers of the camp. She is using skills learned on an emergency site planning course (with RedR) to help us plan out the camp. It's a huge challenge and she never stops working.

Our logistics guy, Craig, is an American Salvationist who works for UPS. His company has released him to run our logisitics operations. When he starts talking of 'skids' (that's pallets to the uninitiated!) and other technical things I'm reminded that there are so many skills needed to make a team. I don't have his skills - but he has made them available to us and we would be the poorer without him. Today he announced a project that he and UPS have put together to help us. We have 3,000 families registered in our camp. Each distribution means issuing a ratio card and then checking eligibility when they line up for food. UPS has offered to take our family register and produce Family ID cards with a bar code. So in future, as each person comes through the line, their ID will be scanned and the software will track exactly what they have received and when. Talk about hi-tech relief work - makes me feel a bit of a dinosaur!

The best bit of today was when the Colonel from the 82nd Airborn visited (along with his team of rather imposing officers and NCOs). He congratulated TSA for our work and distribution of around 400,000 meals to date. It was amazing to hear such a high ranking officer speak so highly of our efforts. He talked of the importance of getting food out and then asked for our help. As far as he is concerned, TSA is really doing the business. While others are talking about supplies in the pipeline - we are up and running. He asked if we could possibly help get urgently needed food into areas that had not yet received supplies. Of course, our immediate response was, 'Yes, Sir!' As a result we will be going with the 82nd to distribute 174,000 meals tomorrow. They are desperate to get rations out to help reduce the need. I have confidence that they will provide the security and our distribution team of 4 will help the 82nd make sure food gets where it's needed.

I was so proud of the team and their ability to step up to the plate. I was also thrilled by the response of our support team back in Washington. When we gave them the news that the food stored for this coming week was being given out tomorrow and that we would need more they simply said, 'don't worry - we'll get more to you'. Thanks, folks!

Tonight we welcome new team members - including 4 Hatian officers from other parts of the territory and a couple of new folks from the USA. We pray they quickly feel at home in the team.