Supply Convoy to Costa Rica Gets Underway
On Monday morning, two tractor-trailers and a bus bearing contributions - and possibly Martha Stewart’s prison bunk - set out for a long drive to Costa Rica and the missionaries working here.

The convoy, carrying supplies for Christian missionaries in Costa Rica, was organized by three churches: Greenbrier Baptist Church in Roncervte and Woods Chapel in New Market, Virginia., and Kegley Baptist Church in Kegley, West Virginia.

The project, which took two years to put together, was inspired when members of the church saw the missionaries’ work for themselves, said Sue Shinn, on of the organizer, Lonnie Shinn’s wife.

“Several years ago we were invited to go and visit the missionaries,” she said. “We just wanted to see what was going and what they were doing, and what we could do to help,” she said.

The missionaries work with teenagers and other youth, and they host Christian camps four to six times a year, Shinn said. Each camp hosts 100 to 150 young people.

Instead of giving the missionaries’ camp traditional donations like food, the Kegley church is taking items that will help the camp’s accommodations.

“The main thing we are taking is metal bunk beds,” Shinn said. “They’ve been using wooden beds and the termites eat those up.”

The church found the metal bunks at a fairly well known place, the Alderson Federal Prison Camp. Also known by the nickname “Camp Cupcake,” the camp is a minimum-security facility for female federal inmates. One of the facility’s most recent and famous inmates was celebrity Martha Stewart, who served a term there from 2004 to 2005.

When Alderson’s dormitories were being renovated and receiving new fixtures, the church purchased the bunks that were being replaced, Shinn said.

“They were priced very, very reasonably,” she said, adding with a laugh, “We probably have Martha Stewart’s bed and don’t know it.”

The bunks will go to the Costa Rican mission’s camp along with stoves and other appliances donated by Concord University, Shinn said. A Bible college that offers housing to married students will receive the appliances.

One donation, a boat, was being towed by the bus. Now the camp’s students can have boating among their recreational activities, Sue Shinn said.

The convoy will go through Texas, Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and Nicaragua. Sue Shinn was not going on the trip, but Lonnie and three other drivers, Johnathan White, convoy leader Norman Mendez and Nathaniel Kelly, will undergo the journey.

“It takes seven to 12 days if they don’t have any trouble,” Sue Shinn said.

Lonnie Shinn said handling the border crossings and the necessary paper work are the biggest challenges.