This year we’ve continued to think about and try and help people who aren’t able to have their own house.
A lot of the ideas for our project have come from church service activities. The first one was an activity that a lady in our ward, Sister Hale, does year-round. She made a post on our ward Facebook group asking people to sign up to help her make sleeping mats for homeless people. The way that she does this is by making plastic yarn (or “plarn”) out of grocery bags. To do this you flatten out the bag, fold it up, and then cut off the bottom and the handles. You then tie the bags together until you have a ball of plarn!
You can then weave the plarn onto a special loom:
Once all of that work is done, you end up with a waterproof sleeping mat that can be very helpful for those without homes.
We all worked on sorting, flattening, and cutting plastic bags during the year, and Eliza and Denise also went over to her house to help weave the mats.
Another activity that we did was the same one we did as a family yesterday: tying blankets! In September, our stake joined with several other stakes and organizations in the Las Vegas valley. They held an activity to donate 15,000 blankets to the Title 1 HOPE (Homeless Outreach Program for Education) Project of the Clark County School District. They work to remove barriers for students experiencing homelessness, to enroll in school and educate school personnel, parents, and unaccompanied youth of the educational options under McKinney-Vento Federal Law.
There are thousands of students in the Clark County School District who experience homelessness. Many of them live with friends or relatives; in a hotel or motel; in an emergency or transitional shelter; or in a car, park, or even on the street. The Title 1 HOPE Project helps these students enroll in school and provides them with free school breakfast and lunch. They also provide backpacks with school supplies and toiletries, transportation to school, summer school tuition grants, and emergency clothing.
Several of us went to the big stake activity and helped to meet the goal of 15,000 blankets donated. Each blanket was folded up and included a note to the person who would eventually get it.
The project also accepts donations all year long, and we decided to also make some of our own! We went to the store and all picked out fabrics that we loved.
Then we brought it home and got started cutting the fabric.
Then everyone worked on tying the blankets off, even Sadie!
We’re still working on finishing up the last of the tying. Once we do we’ll make our own notes and drop them off at the Title 1 HOPE Project.
We’ve had a lot of conversations about the kids that are dealing with homelessness. We know that any one of us could end up in a situation like that, and we are so grateful that we can do something to make their days a little brighter and warmer.
Merry Christmas, Grammy and Granddad! We love you! Thanks for giving us the opportunity to intentionally love others each and every year.
Chad, Denise, Eliza, Henry, and Sadie (and Finley!)