Welcome to my corner of the internet! I haven’t blogged here in a long time, but when Lisabet Sarai invited me to join her on her Charity Sunday blog hop, I couldn’t resist! There are so many organizations deserving of our time and funds, but I’m going to start with local groups. If you know of a West Michigan organization you’d like me to feature on a future Charity Sunday, please reach out to me at patriciakiyonoauthor@gmail.com and we’ll talk! For each comment on the blog feature, I’ll donate money to the group or company.
For this first Charity Sunday hop, I’m sharing a bit about a small group of women I’ve had the pleasure of working with for about ten years. Twice a month, we get together at Diane Solomon’s home in Grandville, MI to sew hats out of polar fleece. These hats are given to various other charities, homeless shelters, and schools. One thousand hats are sent annually to a mission in Juarez, Mexico.
Each of the ladies present has a jobs in the process – some sew, and some cut fringe and tie the tassles. Diane does all the cutting – by hand! It’s amazing her hands haven’t suffered from all that repetitive motion! My job is to sew the hems on the bottoms of the hats after they’ve been assembled.
When I have the bottom hem done, other ladies cut the top of the hat into strips and tie the strips together to make a tassle. We go through a massive amount of fabric each time, but it’s a lot of fun. We like to compare the various colors and textures of fleece, speculate on the people that will wear them, and laugh with each other when we make mistakes! But our main job is to make sure that people have something to put on their heads in the cold, snowy winter.
After the hats are completed, we sort them in piles of ten and then bag them – fifty per bag. On a good morning we can finish two hundred hats! We meet all year long (except the second half of December) because winters are really cold in Michigan, and there are a lot of families who are having a rough time. Each year we send a thousand hats to Juarez, Mexico, to a mission that distributes them along with a nice Christmas dinner. We also donate to various local missions – The Santa Claus Girls collects gifts to distribute each holiday, and In the Image provides basic needs for people all year long. Diane also scours the newspaper for notices from teachers and social workers asking for hats for the children in their care.
Diane keeps great records, and at the end of each year she lets us know how we’ve done. Her report last December said that 3450 hats had been donated in 2018. Since the group began, 52,710 hats had been made and donated. That’s a lot of warm ears!
I hope you enjoyed this view of the Warm Ears Ministry. If you’d like to leave a comment of encouragement, please do so! For each comment, I will donate $5 toward materials.
Check out these other blogs on the hop:
Check out these other blogs on the hop:
