In the Spotlight

Stake Relief Society Offers Humanitarian Service

Relief Society sisters of the Westland Michigan Stake pulled together in March to offer humanitarian service in various ways.

The sisters spent an entire Saturday making fleece blankets, knitting leper bandages, painting toy cars, donating blood, and stuffing envelopes for an organization that assists the visually impaired. Half of the 126 blankets completed were sent to the Pordenone Military Branch, Trieste Italy District, whose members occasionally take donated supplies to a refugee camp near Zagreb, Croatia. The other blankets, along with the bandages, were donated to the Latter-day Saint Humanitarian Center in Salt Lake City. The toys were given to the Happy Factory, an organization that distributes toys to needy children worldwide.

After the sisters stuffed 1,500 envelopes for an information center for the visually impaired, the center’s president was so impressed that he added information about Church curriculum materials for the visually impaired to his next informational brochure.

California Church Member Is “Santa’s Helper”

Emory Sonderegger recently led members of his Irvine California Stake in a project to make 1,200 wooden toys for children in need. Some 65 families enjoyed helping Brother Sonderegger by sanding and painting wooden trucks and cars in their own homes. The toys were donated to the humanitarian center, which then distributed the toys to refugee camps in Afghanistan and to homeless shelters, orphanages, and hospitals in other parts of the world.

Brother Sonderegger, 71, has been making and donating wooden toys for the past seven years and now completes dozens of toys on his own each month, including automobiles, airplanes, bags of blocks, and doll cradles. “I’m retired now, so this is my way of rendering service,” he says.

Emory Sonderegger loves to make and donate toys to needy children. (Photo by Hung Leung Wong.)