Blessing Bids are when people lift their bidder card to donate for specific MCC projects around the world.  This year’s BB projects are:

$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.

There’s an old gospel song that starts off with the line “Talk about sufferin’ here below, but let’s keep following Jesus.”  When we read, listen to, or look at the news from around the world, a lot of it is talking about suffering.  In response to that suffering, there are several things we can do. Some of those revolve around talking about the suffering and some involve doing something about the suffering.  If our talking is just lamenting or complaining, we are not helping the situation much.  If we  each individually try to do something, we are soon overcome by the size of the task.

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.

The annual spring meeting of the NMRS was held on April 30 at the Riverside Mennonite Church.  The usual business required by the State of Michigan was held, but the more interesting discussion was about the 2011 Relief Sale.  We will have more information on the plans for the Friday night concert and other parts of the sale on this blog and the website.

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!

Welcome to our new Relief Sale website.  We’re so excited about our new website that offers all of the great information we had on our previous site, but now we’re blogging!  We’ll be blogging about great products that will be donated to the sale this year as well as the hard work that will go into preparations for the sale.

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