The Boutique
Open: Thursdays 10:00 - 4:00
About 1985 Sue Blevins and Ruth
Johnson had a wonderful idea that the church and the community needed a
second hand store. Ruth can remember them looking over the church and
deciding the best place for it and you know the rest of the story.
Ruth was chairman for fourteen years.
The money from it has been used for many community charities as well as
needs worldwide. Some of the projects have been search and rescue, fire
victims as well as forest fire fighters, families down on their luck,
volunteers going on missions, camp expenses, church needs and many other
things to numerous to mention.
Every Monday the sorting crew (or as they are
sometimes known “the bag ladies”) arrive very early to start the job of
sorting through the boxes and bags of used merchandise that have been
contributed to stock the Boutique. We do not have room in the Boutique for
every item so we sort out the best and then bag up the rest to be taken to
Billings to Goodwill or some other charity.
We also set aside things for special requests
such as wool for rug hooking or material to make quilts. People in need are
given items and we try to select goods that can be used by Head Start.
We even get in mysteries that we don’t even
know what they are and sometimes don’t find out.
We sell most of the items for $5. for each
brown paper bag full. The money is used for projects and charities of the
United Methodist Women.
Johanna Gimmeson, Dorothy Lorenz, Jeanne Wirth,
Fern Meeker, and Carol Howell were already working when I joined the crew
ten years ago. During the last year Bert Schmitt and Lisa Price have joined
the group.
We fill so many black plastic garbage sacks
that it makes a problem of how to dispose of them. For instance in August
and September we sent about 250 bags to Billings for Goodwill and other
charities. Even though people took up bags nearly every week we still had to
rent a truck and send up 97 bags last week to Billings.
Several men help us carry bags out and
load them, but we need more to help us with this job.
We don’t
want to over work our willing helpers so we would be happy to have more
volunteers.
Zeda Wall Dudley, Chairman
Dorothy Lorenz, Vice
Chairman
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