Colorado Woman Make Blankets for Children in Need

If you are looking for a unique way to help children in need, (besides making a charitable donation and wondering how many pennies out of each of your dollars will actually help a child), I would like to introduce you to a woman who has spent the last 5 years of her life making little blankets --- she calls them "Blankys" --- for the sick children of friends and neighbors and co-workers and strangers, and for children in hospitals and orphanages around the world. She has seen her blankets comfort children living in unbelievable poverty, and she has seen her blankets adorning the caskets of children. But through it all, she has continued her mission to bring some happiness to children throughout the world with her Blankys.

Her name is GrandMa-RaRa, (a nickname given to her by one of her grandchildren who couldn't say her name - "Rhonda"), and her mission to "Wrap the World's Children in Warmth," began on January 23, 2003. How does she remember the exact date? "I stopped at a garage sale, and I saw this sewing machine for $30," she says, admitting that she hadn't sewn anything in years, and at the time couldn't figure out why she was drawn to the machine. She bought the machine, took it home, and almost immediately, the idea of sewing blankets for children in need came to her "like a blossoming flower."

Rhonda has no doubt that this mission was sent to her by God, because it just "started rolling" almost immediately. Right after she bought the sewing machine, she found herself in a beauty parlor she'd never been to before, talking to a stranger in the next chair, and by the time she left, "I told her I would make 200 blankets for her." The blankets ended up being sent to children in 9 countries. She learned that her boss (yes, she works full-time, too!!) had a ministry in Kenya that involved an orphanage. "I sent a few Blankys with him every time he left on a trip." And although she estimates she has made "over 3000" Blankys in the past 5 years, it was the Blankys that she sent to Kenya that eventually led to one of the most moving experiences she has had since she began sewing her "Grandma-RaRa's Blankys."