Memories
BEFORE WORKDAY
AFTER WORKDAY
HAVEN WOMEN'S CENTER
When women and children flee abusive situations many times it is with only the clothes on their backs, so access to needed basic items becomes paramount. Wistaria's ongoing support for Haven Women's Center over the past several years has resulted in significant donations of clothing, shoes, personal hygiene products, and kids' backpacks filled with school supplies. Also, scheduled workdays have set up and maintained their local shelter's clothes closet. The sorting and culling of bags and boxes received from other community members requires many hours of work, yet this simple task makes it easier and less stressful for a mother to find a child's coat, Size 8, when it is needed most. We are blessed that many such workdays are scheduled throughout the year. More pictures are located on our website's Community Service tab under the Crisis Centers dropdown menu.
MASONIC FAMILY APPRECIATION
Wistaria members prepared surprise gifts to show our appreciation of our Masonic Brothers of Turlock Lodge #236. Their generous support of our community efforts are so beneficial to many of our neighbors in need. THANK YOU!
PATIENT COMFORT
Most recently Wistaria's Patient Comfort Station added walker totes to our long list of items being created to fill the needs of our community. Other new projects include pet pillows, meal aprons, and rice pillows. More details on these projects can be found on our website's Community Service tab under the Patient Comfort Station dropdown menu.
Walker Totes
Pet Pillows
FRIENDS OF TURLOCK
Wistaria is caring for the canines in our local community as well as supporting the nationwide efforts of the Service Canines Project, one of the identifying charities of Eastern Star's General Grand Chapter. Recently, our Patient Comfort Station completed 40 pet pillows and donated them to Friends of Turlock during this very cold winter season. More details on this project can be found on our website's Community Service tab under the Patient Comfort Station dropdown menu.
WESTSIDE MINISTRIES
Tis the season to go outside our comfort zones and look for ways to bring smiles to some of our local kids. How blessed we are to have Westside Ministries offering a safe place that features afterschool tutoring, spiritual enrichment, and good meals for our neighborhood kids. After a "bit" of manual labor, we are grateful to Pay Goodness Forward in the form of fruit cups to these growing souls through partnership with a local cannery. More details on this project can be found on our website's Community Service tab under the Outreach to Children dropdown menu.
SIERRA VISTA CHILD & FAMILY SERVICES
At Halloween Wistaria was asked to provide goodies as treats for local foster children. Our members were generous in their response, and our goodie donations helped to make the event yummy and lots of fun! More pictures are located on our website's Community Service tab under the Outreach to Children dropdown menu.
BACKPACKS FOR LOCAL SCHOOL CHILDREN
Wistaria once again used our adopt-a-poll earnings to designate funds for the purchase of backpacks and school supplies for our local children. With the generous assistance of Turlock Masonic Lodge we were able to supply 314 filled backpacks for students in need in our hometown.
This year the annual community drive-thru drop off of school supplies at the Turlock Unified School District's office found our neighbors busy elsewhere and their turnout was minimal. Our hope is that they participated in other collections elsewhere in our hometown.
TUSD informed us that throughout the past 6 years, the backpacks we have donated have been greatly appreciated. Additionally, they informed us that this year's donations will be given to students who are in foster care, are homeless, or who are refugees that recently settled in Turlock. Paying goodness forward is AWESOME!
SHRINERS HOSPITAL FOR CHILDREN
Wistaria members contacted Shriners Hospital to find out what items were most needed for the comfort and entertainment of their patients. They informed us that lots of items come in for primary school-aged children; however, infants and teens are often overlooked. In light of that information and in direct response to several specific requests, we set about raising designated funds and began shopping for lovey blankets for infants and sketch pads, colored pencils, drawing instruction books, expert-level dot-to-dot books, cards, dice, Yahtzee score pads, games, nail polish and emery boards for teens.
When our collection for 25 infants and 100 teens was complete, we planned our delivery to coincide with a tour of their hospital's community. As we walked through their Sacramento facility we were AMAZED at the quality of care provided to so many children daily, the state-of-the-art medical equipment on-site, the thoughtfulness that goes into the individual needs of so many children, and the beneficial results their efforts achieve.
Weekdays 150 children receive ongoing medical care and rehabilitation as outpatients, and approximately 20-30 children are inpatients at the hospital. We visited their Motion Analysis Lab, playground, onsite school, rehabilitation sample apartment, and Prosthetics Orthopedic Lab. Throughout the tour we passed children in the common areas ... one whizzed past us on a specially fitted tricycle that accommodated his prosthetic leg.
Our guides were careful to respect the privacy of children receiving hands-on care, so we did not see the medical devices being used; however, we did see a low dosage x-ray machine that allows patients with spinal injuries to stand during its exam to better see how their body mechanics are being affected.
This humbling experience reminded each of us how very blessed we are in our lives. How wonderful to be a part of this extended Masonic family!
COMMUNITY OUTREACH AT LOCAL FARMERS' MARKET
Wistaria Chapter was at Turlock's Certified Farmers' Market to let visitors know about some of the goodness being spread in our community and our world by the Order of the Eastern Star.
During the event we highlight examples of our various projects, encourage them to participate along with us in paying goodness forward, and point out our nearby Lodge building.
Our hope is that by providing visitors with this website's address they come to know us better and that they have a way to contact us either to join in our activities or to reach out to us if they or someone they know is in need of our Patient Comfort items.
PATIENT COMFORT STATION
Our Eastern Star Patient Comfort Program encouraged Wistaria to "Go for the Gold in Patient Comfort Activity" in February, and our small but mighty Chapter ran the race well! Our team completed 2 Seat Belt Covers, 3 Kids Meal Aprons, 6 Lap Quilts, 10 Bear Comfort Pillows, 12 Crocheted Hats, 36 Adult Meal Aprons, and 151 Port Pals during 185 hours of work!
