Undie Sunday Response Overwhelming!

6/27/2013

Undie Sunday Report from United Methodist Women’s president Dixie Jacky:

The Undie Sunday Drive was an overwhelming success! You can't imagine the "undie" stories that took place. We were "undie-dated," the UMW's were the "undie-takers," "DROP YOUR UNDIES here" signs were posted, and more than one pastor was shocked to have a UMW ask them if he/she remembered their "undies."

The churches of the Oregon-Idaho Annual Conference donated hundreds and hundreds of pounds of every conceivable type of underclothing. We can only estimate approximately 1000 cubic feet of donations and at 7 to 10 pounds per cubic feet; well, it was hundreds and hundreds of pounds of undies.

We wish to thank the following:

All of the churches for the Oregon-Idaho Conference that brought undies to Boise; collected undies and gave them to their local agencies, or collected money and will be buying undies for their local agencies.
Boise First UMC for allowing us to store and stage the collection and delivery.
Ted Wimer and his pick-up truck for transporting the items from the Riverside Inn to Boise 1st UMC.
Ron and Judy Halverson for transportation supplies and the big collections bins.
The women of the following churches that came to help sort the piles and piles of underwear into men's, women's and children:
Boise First UMW, Amity UMW, Meridian UMW, Hillview UMW, Kuna UMW, Emmett UMW and Jason Lee Memorial UMW.

The following agencies were among those receiving donations:

United Methodist Retirement Center, Salem, Oregon
Hope's Door, Caldwell, Idaho
Love, Inc., Nampa, Idaho
Boise Rescue Mission, Boise, Idaho
City of Lights, Boise, Idaho
Northwest Children's Home
River of Life, Boise, ID
Project Dove , Ontario, OR
Lighthouse Mission, Boise, ID
Rose Advocates, Payette, ID
Harvest House, Ontario, OR
Corpus Christi House, Boise, ID
Interfaith Sanctuary, Boise, ID
Valley Crisis Center, Nampa, ID
Boise - First, Baby Needs Project, Boise, ID
Men's Gospel Mission, Medford, OR
Women's Shelter, Medford, OR
St. Vincent DePaul's, Medford, OR

We hope that all the churches use this as a model and consider once a year having an "Undie Sunday" drive for the agencies in your communities or neighborhoods that are supporting homeless shelters, domestic violence shelters, or those challenged with the effects of low income.

And Rochelle Killett shared this about the distribution of the "Undies."

"It's been such a joy contacting the agencies and today I spent three hours distributing items to the agencies. Dixie Jacky contacted the Red Cross about the families whose apartments were burned in Nampa Monday morning.

This morning the two of the three families came to pick up much needed underwear as they had lost everything. They also called the mother of the family not represented as she couldn't come due to her working schedule. However they got the sizes of her 8 children and we collected underwear for them too. They were in tears at the generosity of a group of people they don't know who would help them out. One asked me how often we do this and was surprised to find out this was our first time.

Agency people have been overcome with tears at the volume of items we have to share. Two came back today because we have so much still left.......14 long tables still after 8 agencies and 3 families have taken what they can use. That was no small gift. As the distribution has progressed we have served 3 agencies we hadn't known about previously So many are helped by this process.

We were happy to see the piece in the Tuesday paper about the distribution. United Methodists need to be more vocal when we do good things."