Sunday, September 22, 2019

Charity Sunday: The Mel Trotter Mission




Welcome to the second Charity Sunday! If you were here earlier today, I apologize that my post wasn't complete. Sometimes life gets in the way.

Today I want to tell you about another charity located in Grand Rapids, Michigan. The Mel Trotter Mission offers a shelter for the homeless in the city. You can read about them on their website, but I can share with you that whenever there is a problem in the city, the Mel Trotter Mission is there to help.
A man named Mel Trotter started the Grand Rapids City Rescue Mission in 1900. Eventually the mission was named after him. 

The mission operates on donations, as well as sales from their thrift stores, located in several places around the city. The Warming Ears Ministry that I shared with you last month visited the mission and the store headquarters last year. Since it was fall and a harsh winter was predicted, we brought several hundred hats with us. Here are some pictures from that visit.

We arrived with our fleece hats..


Donations are organized, ready to be sent to the shelter or to the thrift stores..
One of the few paid workers at the mission showed us how the mission donations are handled.


Do you have an organization near you that helps to provide the homeless with basic needs? 

I will personally donate $5 to the Mel Trotter Mission for each comment on this post until midnight, September 23, 2019. Please comment below, and tell your friends!

Please visit the other Charity Sunday blogs:

Tuesday, September 3, 2019

New Release: Krysten Lindsay Hager and In Over Her Head


I’m so pleased to welcome Krysten Lindsay Hager to Creative Hodgepodge today. Krysten has made a name for herself as a prolific author of young adult novels, and today she’s celebrating the release of her newest release, the second in her Cecily Taylor Series.

In Over Her Head: Lights, Camera, Anxiety (The Cecily Taylor Series) by Krysten Lindsay Hager
Young Adult Romantic Comedy from Clean Reads
Blurb: Cecily wants a big life, but can she handle it?
Cecily feels like she has it all: great best friends, the beginnings of a career as a model/actress, and she’s dating her favorite singer, Andrew Holiday. Then Cecily’s best friend Lila begins to ditch her every time Lila’s boyfriend calls. Cecily feels lost, but she and Andrew begin connecting more and she’s never been in a relationship where she felt so understood. Andrew even begins to confide in her about his anxiety. Soon Cecily experiences her own anxiety on a magazine photo shoot, but she manages to impress the magazine staff. Just when it seems like all her dreams are coming true, everything comes crashing down when a photo of Andrew with another girl appears online. He swears nothing happened, but Cecily is crushed. She feels like she’s lost two of the people closest to her.
Was her perfect relationship real or was she in over her head?

Excerpt:
 One day I had the career and the guy of my dreams. Then Danielle King came along. If people could be trusted, maybe it would have been okay, but they can’t. They suck. And now my dream relationship was gone and no one would ever know what had actually been in my grasp.
How can a person go from having a whole life with someone, and then it ends like you were never even together? No wonder people talk about how awful divorces are. That must hurt a million times more. Sure, I don’t have to see Andrew every day at school like I did Zach, but it seems like Andrew was everywhere. I went to the grocery store with my mom and they were playing one of his songs because he’s technically a local.
 Andrew’s music was always what I listened to when I was sad. His heartache music got me through the worst times and now, not only could I not stand to listen to it, there was now the chance I could end up hearing music about our breakup. Actually, I didn’t know which was worse: the possibility he’d use our relationship as inspiration for a song, or finding out I was barely a blip on his radar and not even warranting a mention. 
What was I supposed to do now?

Purchase:
Book Depository: https://bit.ly/2ZuKQun


Author Bio: Krysten Lindsay Hager writes about friendship, self-esteem, fitting in, frenemies, crushes, fame, first loves, and values. She is the author of True Colors, Best Friends...Forever?, Next Door to a Star,  Landry in Like, Competing with the Star, Dating the It Guy, and Can Dreams Come True. Krysten's work has been featured in USA Today, The Flint Journal, the Grand Haven Tribune, the Beavercreek Current, the Bellbrook Times, Springfield News-Sun, Grand Blanc View, Dayton Daily News and on Living Dayton. 
Author links: