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:

Charity Sunday: The Warming Ears Ministry

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:

The "I've Always Wanted to Write a Book" Conference

I am getting excited about the "I've Always Wanted to Write a Book" Conference hosted by GRRWG (that's Grand Rapids Region Writers Group) coming up in October. This is my first writers' conference since being published, so I'm going with the goal of promoting, rather than searching for a publisher. There is going to be a booksigning event, and I hope to participate (that's paperwork in my "to do" pile).

It's going to be a great time! Even though the conference is a whole 13 miles from my house, I'm spending the night at the hotel, so I can mingle with my writing friends. We'll have some great speakers, and a lot of give-aways (otherwise known as SWAG – Stuff We All Get).

I wanted to add something to the goody bag, so I made a bunch of pseudo-book thongs out of stuff I already had. I used my business cards, some ribbon, and some paper cutouts (they're cheaper and easier to handle than beads). On the back of the business cards I attached a sticker (address labels from Vista Print) featuring a picture of my book cover. I hope people like them! The picture above isn't a great shot, but you get the idea.

So anyway, if you've always wanted to write a book, go to the GRRWG blog and register online! Here's the link:

Matthew's House

Yesterday I delivered some of our “Warming Ears” fleece hats to a mission in the West Side of Grand Rapids called Matthew’s House. I had never taken a delivery before, so I asked my good friend Rose to come with me. In addition to providing moral support, Rose belongs to a Bible Study with the director of the mission, Pastor George Werkema.

Matthew’s House gets its name from Matthew 9:10: “While Jesus was having dinner at Matthew’s house, many tax collectors and sinners came and ate with him and his disciples.” The door is open to all who need help of any kind. The neat white building on the corner of 7^th Street and Alpine is set up like a comfortable coffeehouse where people can come and get moral as well as physical support.

When you first enter, large round tables invite you to sit and have a cup of coffee with your neighbors. Bookcases are filled with reading materials as well as games and toys. Baskets near the front hold items people can take, such as toiletries and clothing. In the back corner of the great room, three computers with internet access are available. These computers are used for computer literacy classes as well as job searches and resume writing.

In the next room, people have free use of a washer and dryer, as well as a shower. As one of the women there told us, “When I’m clean on the outside, I feel better about myself, and then I’m more able to accept the help I need to stay clean inside.” A quiet gentleman told us he went through a period where he was unable to pay his utility bills, so he came to Matthew’s House every day to shower and stay warm. Both of these people provided wonderful testimonies to the helping hand they received through this mission.

Students in the neighborhood can come to Matthew’s House for tutoring and mentoring. Adult education classes in skills such as knitting and crafting are also offered, and a beautician comes regularly to give free haircuts. Pastor George told me he doesn’t have an agenda for what happens there, but the gifts people bring and the needs that arise are what drive the events.

As with all faith-based ministries, the need is great. There are many ways we can work together to ease this need. Go to their website at http://matthews-house.org/home for information about this wonderful place. The “Services” page lists ways you can help. I know the Warm Ears Ministry will be back with more hats as the days get colder.