Clowns! Clowns! And also colorful, warm lap robes and personal totes!  Happy faces are everywhere! This is the theme for our celebration of Clown Sunday on October 24, 2004. It is at this annual service in which we dedicate the clowns, lap robes, and totes to the service of God in ministering to those in need of a friend. In 2001 we made our 30^th annual delivery to UCLA-Harbor General Hospital in Torrance, to County-USC Hospital in La Habra, and this year to the Gardena Senior Citizens Day Care Center. – (an Alzheimer’s Day Care Resource Center).  The tradition continues.

The staffs at these hospitals tell us that our accumulated effort brings smiles to the patient’s faces on otherwise difficult days. The children will talk with a clown when in many cases they will not talk with the doctors and nurses. How much easier it is to receive a shot when you are hugging a clown. 

  The volunteers from both the Church and the Community put in many hours making the Clowns and other items because they know how much good it does for those who receive them. It is estimated that each Clown (all cloth and all hand made) takes 12 hours of volunteer labor. We do ask the organizations that receive them to only give them to their patients. Because of the spirit in which they are made we ask that they not be sold as a fund raiser.

This project was started 30 years ago by a group of young women, who named themselves Mod Marthas. The name has stayed with the project although most of the original members of the group have moved out of the area. 
Today the group includes both men and women, so the name was changed to Mod Marthas & Associates. Sarah Mitchell, a member of the original group, is now the project coordinator.