My parents are buried in a community cemetery.  It’s so pretty.  So peaceful.  My husband and I will be buried there.   I hope that’s not for a while.

At one time, the Mendota Cemetery had enough money gaining interest to pay for the upkeep, but that was when interest rates were 12% and gas for the mowing was 60 cents per gallon.  Now, we have to do fundraising.    We are quite a little fundraising machine.  There’s bingo.  We have afghans with screen printed pictures of our rural scenes.  We have cookbooks.  Did I tell you that we never charge any community member for burial there?  Part of the tradition of rural life is pulling together during hard times, and death is a hard time.

We’re raffling off a quilt this year as part of our fundraising.  We’re having a benefit, too, but I’ll write about that later.

Quilt called Common Ground

The quilt is a compilation of 30 women, but there were really only a few that did most of the work.  I was not one of the few, but I did sew six or seven strips together, so I can claim my piece of the quilt’s history.  It’s called “Common Ground”…or maybe “Uncommon Ground”?  See, I don’t even know but I’m still taking credit for part of the quilt!

As the quilt neared completion, we wondered if we could sell 500 tickets.  Margie called me.  I called Nancy.  Nancy called Margie.  Margie called Lisa.  Lisa called Chris.  Chris called Linda.  Maybe not all in that order, but you get the picture.   We could not decide.

I ordered big.   I recalled my neighbor Jennifer saying “we serve a big God…think big!”  She was talking about another subject, but I recalled her statement when ordering the raffle tickets, so I ordered not 500 — but 1,000!!!   Guess what?  Tonight I ordered another 1,000 tickets!

We will have to do a quilt every year following this success.    Maybe I can do more than six strips!!