PA Quilt Trails: Geting Your Quilt Trail on

Week after week I have been blogging about the benefit, the beauty and the importance to the community of the PA Quilt (and Rug) Trails. And if we were to meet face-to-face I would most likely talk your ear off about upcoming quilt squares, after all the PA Quilt (and Rug) Trails is continually evolving and there is much to say.

However this week, this blog posting, I have nothing to say.

This past weekend I attended a Christmas party at an orphanage in one of the poorer towns of Mexico. Hogar de los Niño is located on the outskirts of Naco, Sonora. There are thirteen orphans living there ages ranging from two months to thirteen years old. Many of these orphans are paperless meaning that they were most likely found on the streets and lack any type of identification making them unadoptable. Although the orphanage has electricity enough to power a Christmas tree and a bare bulb, I saw no sign of a heat source. I was told in the past, the children were locked in the building for the evening, alone, as they had no one to stay there overnight. Now they have a house "mother" living with the children making the children somewhat safer at night.

I suppose I could go on for pages on the conditions of Hogar de los Niños but, other than making you feel extremely sorry for these kids, why add the burden of knowledge to your already highly-stressed, over-extended life? And why bring it up at all? I can't say for sure I know except that I realize fully how truly blessed and lucky I am. No I do not have a late model car, I struggle with making rent and bills on time, Christmas this year, present-wise is a few promises of gifts and words of love. Easy to wrap but sometimes hard to swallow in this time of gift giving and spending. But then I remember that my daughter never had to spend cold nights on a cot in a room with twelve others, never to have a parent's hug, never to know her birthday and her birth family. My daughter doesn't use rocks to play catch. She doesn't depend on the kindness of strangers for a coat and shoes.