Helping create heartwarming moments

Ten Sleep Little Shoppers helps students buy presents for family and friends

WORLAND – There is nothing more heartwarming for the giver and the recipient than being able to give someone you love a Christmas gift that you picked out yourself on Christmas morning. For over 40 years, Little Shoppers, a one-day only shopping venue now sponsored by the Ten Sleep United Methodist Women in conjunction with the Ten Sleep Senior Center, has been helping create those heartwarming moments for Ten Sleep School students. This year Little Shoppers will be Friday, Dec. 1.

“Nothing costs over a dollar. The goal is that the students come down and they are not buying gifts for themselves, they are buying gifts for their family and friends. Of course, chances are there is a child or two that pick a present for themselves, too, but the goal is to be able to buy a gift for their family,” Ten Sleep United Methodist Women President Judy Morrison said. “When you see those kids that have never gotten to pick out presents on their own, they typically get presents but they don’t have the money to go down to Shopko and pick out presents for the ones they love, it is really something, they are just so thrilled,” she added.

Ten Sleep School supports the venue by setting aside time for the students to come down as a class to shop. “We work with the school district and have a morning where the kids come down grade level by grade level and pick out the items that they want to buy for their family. You see kids coming out with one or two things in their bag and kids coming out with bags and bags, but that’s up to them,” Morrison said. She added that the ladies also wrap the student’s presents for them.

Ten Sleep resident Doris Anderson said, “I think it [Little Shoppers] was started by a group of women from the Ten Sleep Ladies Aid. Florence Harvard and Muriel Snyder were two of them. I know my children shopped there when they were in elementary school. Later the Ten Sleep Senior Citizens did it for many years. When they were unable to continue, the United Methodist Women is sponsoring it with generous help from the community with gifts and helping at the Center.”

Donations are accepted from community members and local businesses, Morrison said. She explained that the donations are supposed to be inexpensive items in good order. “If it’s battery operated we put batteries in it, make sure it really works and keep batteries in it, so when they take anything away it’s really ready to go. It’s cleaned up, washed if it was used, has batteries in it, it works,” Morrison said. She added that donations are still being accepted and can be brought to the Ten Sleep Senior Center or The Ten Sleep United Methodist Church.

Currently the United Methodist Women and volunteers are working to organize the donations and clean them up; if needed. Dec. 1 , they will put like items with like items; women’s gifts in one area, men’s in another, on tables in the senior center to make shopping easier for the students.