Blankets for the Burmese

As I've mentioned before, we have a growing congregation of Burmese refugees that use our church building on Sunday afternoons. About a dozen of us are also going to their homes weekly to help them learn English. A couple weeks ago our congregations played a rousing game of soccer (they won, but only by one point). All in all, I feel that this arrangement blesses both us and them.

As we've hit colder weather finally, we are finding that many of these families are in need of warm blankets and warm coats. For instance, the family I am tutoring in English only arrived in the US in late September when it was still quite warm. Burma/Myanmar is a tropical country not far from Vietnam and Cambodia. We're talking jungles. It does not get very cold there. Many of these wonderful people are in for a shock this winter.

I have a lot of blankets around the house, but many of them are family heirlooms (quilts and afghans made by loved ones now in heaven) and some of those are in poor shape. I do have a couple non-precious blankets and a quilt or two that I've made that I can pass on. But I also put an ad on our local freecycle network asking for blankets. Three people responded and so I have been rounding up the blankets for the past week. Altogether I think I've gathered about 15 blankets of various sizes, along with some pillows and coats.

Awesome, right? Well, mostly. You see, through this process I have come to realize that while I may think of my home as messy, everything is relative.

At one house, the smell of cat litter box was quite powerful upon entering and when I got the blankets home I realized they smelled like an ashtray. However, they cleaned up well with hot water and bleach. At another house I picked up a huge pile of blankets. When I got them home and examined them under the light, I could see that many had stains and/or holes in them. Even after washing and drying they still smell . . . there's no nice way to say this . . . like a "scuzzy" person's house (that is the descriptor a relative of mine uses, and I think it is apt in this case). I mean, I'd hesitate to give a couple of these blankets to homeless people. It would be insulting.

But I suppose I should bring them all to church and get a second opinion from Lisa, our "liason" with the Chin congregation. I want our friends to be warm. But I don't want them to mistakenly believe that we think so little of them as to give them stained blankets that smell funny (again, these are the ones that have already been washed).

Anyway, if you ever feel like your housecleaning isn't up to snuff, just realize that there are a lot of people out there with standards that are much lower than yours.

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