MCC's Winter Warm-Up Event

Yesterday afternoon, our church joined many other churches around the US and Canada in holding a comforter-tying event to celebrate Mennonite Central Committee’s 100th anniversary. Some churches had theirs in the morning. We scheduled ours from 3-5 with dinner afterward.

Pat and I were a bit nervous when no one had yet shown up at 2:50 p.m., but then a flood of people came in—30 of us, total. About a third were friends and community members who had been invited by people from our church. I was thrilled that my friend Christi, two of her kids, and her mom came, and Christi brought three friends with her. Christi was with us in the deck collapse in June 2017 and was so severely injured that she spent all of that summer hospitalized in Seattle. She has fought long and hard to recover from that injury. I know it’s still a daily battle, but it was so nice to see her smiling face last night.

We set up several tables and spread the comforters out on them. As I had done much of the prep work in making the comforters, I let other people tie and took advantage of the opportunity to hold babies and take pictures.

Susan’s hands:

And one of my favorites:

This is Zach, working on a comforter next to his grandmother, Shirley. Zach and his wife came with their three kids. I let the two older girls have my camera for a bit and they took some interesting pictures, including this one of their mom:

These hard-working volunteers tied five comforters in two hours and then we all sat down to a meal of BBQ pork, salads, chips, and dessert. I think everyone had a good time. The comforters will be added to the other ones we’ve done and will travel to Portland with me in a few weeks to be delivered to MCC.