If you prefer to help before the sale there are plenty of opportunities. Clean up and set up happens the entire week before the sale. Willing hands are always welcome. Spread the word about the sale. Take some flyers to a place that interested people may gather. Put information about the weekend on your facebook page. However you communicate, let others know. Another way to help ahead of time is to craft a unique item for the Crafter’s Corner, General Auction, Quilt Auction, or Silent Auction. Grow some extra produce to give to the Produce Stand. Bake something delicious for the Country Store or start some potted plants. Donate those books you have already read to Used Books. The General Auction and Silent Auction can also use good items that you no longer need.

For those who want to be involved that weekend, helpers are always needed. Any of the booths, activities, or food stands would gladly find a spot for you. Just make yourself available and see how quickly you can become a blessing to others. Oh! I almost forgot to mention buyers. We need lots of you to attend the sale. We really appreciate those of you who come to purchase items and food.

After the sale, guess what? More hands are needed to clean up, take down, and put away. Without these wonderful people the sale would not be in shape for the next year.

So you see there are many ways to be involved. Choose the time and way that suits you best. See you this summer and at the Relief Sale in August.

If you are a bicyclist plan on riding this August. More details will be available as we get closer to the first weekend in August. Right now as the weather is getting along towards summer you can begin warming up for the ride. If you are coming from a distance, don’t forget to bring your bicycle to the northern Michigan Sale this year. Take part in the first bike ride.

It was good to see friends and Relief Sale coworkers to check on how well everyone did over the winter. We also had some new things to talk about at the meeting, and look forward to more ways to make the NMRS a successful event.

This new web page is one of the new things, and you can also find the Northern Michigan Relief Sale on it’s own Facebook page.  We hope these will be places where information is readily available and where people can make connections and share ideas.

Watch this spot for news about some new things for the 2012 NMRS, such as a Bike Ride and the Blessing Bids list for 2012.

$500 –Sand Dams Collect Rain Water – Tanzania

Each year seasonal rains are lost due to lack of storage. Surface storage ponds result in evaporation loss.  Sand Dams trap and store water under stream beds for many months after the rains cease. This amount provides tools and supplies for one sand dam.

$320 – Summer Service Projects – United States

     Each summer MCC organizes youth from across the USA into six or ten week leadership training programs. They learn skills while serving communities through bible school, youth programs, and other service activities.  This amount pays for one week of one summer program.

$300 – Clean Water in Vietnam

     Vietnam has lots of rain, so much so that in part of the year the drainage and sewer systems overflow,  contaminting water and spreading disease.  MCC trains women from local work coops to improve drainage, make safe wells, and use filter systems.  This amount will help one household afford the tools and supplies for a safe well and water system.

$288 – New Life for Women in Bangladesh

In Bangladesh, many girls are forced into sex work to support themselves and families. MCC’s Pobitra program is 8 months of vocational training, health care, literacy and spiritual training, that enables them to enter into a new life. This amount sponsors one woman for the eight month program.

$275 – HIV / AIDS care in El Salvador

The stigma around AIDS/ HIV prevents people from getting tested or admitting they are infected.  This amount provides training for village health promoters and helps 5 patients with transportion to appoinments and getting their prescriptions filled

$120 – Traveling Medicine Teams in Ukraine

Local health facilities are rare in rural areas.  MCC and Christian Medical Association send traveling teams to examine and treat patients, plus arrange for specialized care or surgeries.  This amount provides medicines for 10 patients who come to the clinics held by the traveling teams.

$103 – Growing New Crops in Chad

MCC provides training and technical help for farmers beginning to grow crops, other than cash crops.  Carrots, tomatos, watermelons, green beans and others provide nutritious food for the family and to sell in local markets. Tools are shared within a village, along with weeding and watering tasks. This amount provides sufficient garden`tools and one year’s seeds for one village.

$85 – Sewing Clothing and Income– Southern Sudan

After years of conflict, Southern Sudan is the world’s newest country, but problems remain.  MCC’s local partners teach tailoring and income generation classes.  Women then can afford a home, school fees, and better lives for families.  This amount provides 5 days of training and subsidizes half the cost of one sewing machine.

$77 – Healthy Garden Soil in Lebanon

The refugees from Palestine and Syria in Lebanon’s camps stretch existing food supplies and create large amounts of waste and garbage piled up around camps.  MCC and local groups train families to set up composting bins to transform waste into healthy soil for fruit and vegetable gardens. This amount pays for instruction and materials for a one-family composting container.

$25 – URGENT NEED - Food for Work – Famine Relief in East Africa

     There has been no consistent rain for two year’s of rainy seasons in East Africa.  MCC has committed $1.2 million to Food-For-Work projects in Kenya and Ethiopia.  Workers are paid in cooking oil, maize and beans as they build 92 sand dams and 25 water wells.

Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) works on both the talking and doing fronts.  Part of their mission is to educate Mennonites and other concerned people about the suffering around the world.  The rest of their mission is to do something about the suffering.

The “doing” ranges from short-term urgent relief in the form of food and other life essentials to long term solutions such as developing clean water sources and sustainable agriculture, educating workers and leaders, and helping to find common ground for peace in the midst of violent conflict.

The goal of the Northern Michigan Relief Sale is also two pronged… to raise awareness and raise funds to enable MCC to perform their mission.  It is sometimes a hard connection to make between the green, densely wooded, rolling hills of northern Michigan and an arid, near desert location on the other side of the world.  Yet, some of the funds that you help gather during the NMRS go toward building sand dams, installing foot powered water pumps or setting up  gutters and cisterns to catch seasonally abundant rainwater.

When you come to the NMRS, don’t just look at the quilts and don’t just think about the good foods you can enjoy.  Oh, yes, and don’t look for bargains. Look at the ways that the funds raised each year connect us to the world.   Not one of us can change the world, yet, we can be part of the work of MCC as they try to change it one person and one project at a time.  Soon you’ll be a “Global Christian” and see the world in a new way.

One of the older buildings at the fairground is the “Lion’s Club Kitchen” building.  It is the site of the Saturday morning sausage and pancake breakfast and the noon barbeque chicken lunch.   It is  bit of a nervous time when the various refrigerators and freezers are turned on for the first time each year.  There are usually one or two that need some attention from the local refrigeration repair guy, Jerry.  Fortunately, Jerry has been in the business long enough to have some out of production spare parts and a supply of the older refrigerant on hand to get these old units operational for another year.

This year when you come to the Saturday morning breakfast, we expect to have a newer look.  The Riverside Mennonite Church puts on the breakfast each year, and this year they have decided to do some remodeling in their area of the kitchen.   With some custom built cabinets and newly painted wall paneling, the breakfast area will be a brighter place when they open for business at 6:00 a.m. on Saturday morning.

I’ll be there.  There’s no waiting line at that time of the morning!

So, when we got the first Color Challenge wallhanging for the 2011 sale, we were pleased to find that is was a cat, called Celery Cat.  It looked like no cat we’d ever seen before.  It is a green cat, but it did include each of the 5 fabrics that are in this year’s Color Challenge packet.  25 people purchased packets with 5 different fabric fat quarters at the 2010 sale.  The Challenge is for them to make a wallhanging, not bigger than 40 inches square, using all 5 fabrics in the packet, plus up to 5 of their own choosing.

This is the 4th year for the Color Challenge, and quilt makers from Connecticut to California have purchased the packets for this year.  We look forward to showing you the other entries as they come in.   You can see Celery Cat on the website now.

The dates for this year are August 5 & 6, just 12 weeks away.  Quilters and craftsmen have been working through the winter and have many items are already completed.  In the next weeks we will work to get information and photos for as many of the items as possible on the website.

In the meatime, mark your calendars and make plans to attend!

Check back soon as we’ll be blogging on a regular basis in a couple of weeks.