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Clothing, other items to Orphan Grain Train
McCOOK. Neb. — Clothing and household items stored for years in a building in McCook may make their way around the world after being donated to “Orphan Grain Train.”
Volunteers for OGT have spent several days in McCook this late winter, sorting and bagging items that will be shared domestically and internationally with those in need. Since 1992, OGT volunteers have gathered donations of clothing and shoes, medical supplies, food, Christian literature and other aid to meet real needs in America and 65 foreign countries.
OGT volunteer Beth Stark of Grand Island said Saturday in McCook that a large load of shoes and 77 shipping boxes of jeans left the building in McCook on Feb. 14. Volunteers were back March 10 for coats and household items.
All the donations were taken to a warehouse in Grand Island, where they will be prepared for shipment to the new “Open Door Mission” in Omaha and to American Indian communities in Montana, Wyoming and Arizona.
The Orphan Grain Train takes clothing of every size, shoes, non-breakable household items, small kitchen appliances, quilts/bedding/linens, hospital beds, layettes, toys, typewriters, sewing machines/sewing supplies, mobility aids (walkers, wheelchairs, canes), adult diapers, bicycles, hygiene supplies, school desks/school supplies, winter coats/hats/gloves/scarves, padded chairs, choir robes, underwear, soap, towels, hand tools, garden tools and sports equipment (balls, baseball bats and gloves). Medical books can be shared with some recipients.
OGT volunteers crochet sleeping mats from plastic shopping bags, create little girls’ sun dresses from pillow cases and cut cloth diapers for babies from T-shirts.
More than 4.6 million meals were shipped in 2016, including “Mercy Meals” that are packaged in Wauneta.
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Beth said that fish feeds raise funds for shipping costs and general operating costs of the Central Nebraska OGT warehouse in Grand Island. Volunteering for or donating toward the fish feeds are good ways to support OGT, she said. Fish fries are set for Lincoln, Columbus, Waverly, Waco and Auburn.
Orphan Grain Train got its start responding to the needs of orphans in Russia with American grain shipped on trains. Since 1992, Orphan Grain Train has become a hands-on mission project and a national network with regional divisions across the country organized to get necessary help to the endless requests for food, clothing, medical supplies and Christian-centered literature to those in need across American and around the world.
More than 10 million meals and 2,650 semi-trailer truckloads of food, clothing, medical supplies, and religious materials have been sent to 65 countries on five continents and several disaster areas in America since 1992.
In 2002 and 2003, approximately 330 semi-loads of hay and forage products were delivered to drought-stricken farmers in the Midwest during OGT’s “Operation Hay and Grain Lift.” Hay trucks delivered loads of timothy grass from eastern states to McCook for distribution to horse owners throughout Southwest Nebraska.
In 2014, OGT built a mobile chapel with help from a grant funded by the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod Disaster Relief Division for St. John’s Lutheran Church in Pilger, Neb., after St. John’s church was demolished by an F4 tornado.
All of OGT’s work is done by volunteers and individual contributors.
Volunteers sort and pack the donated items in OGT warehouses across the nation, and volunteers at the other end of the journey place these donations into the hands of needy people.
For more information on Orphan Grain Train, go to www.ogt.org