Let me start by telling you how JuneBug Helping Hands got started. Wanda June Arnold (me) is the founder and owner of
JuneBug which started Christmas 2006 with 51 names of children in need of Christmas.
The bear dress up in the prictue above tells the whole story on how I got the idea of starting JuneBug Helping Hands.
I was setting in my living room Christmas day the year of 2005 crocheting a dress for the bear that was gave to me the 2nd
week in December of 2005. We were all assigned a bear to decorate in the way we saw fit for our Janurary 2006 meeting.
While I was crocheting this dress, I felt like God spoke to me in a small clear vocie. He was saying "this is what I
want you to do. I want you to provide Christmas for children that might not have a Christmas." So I started right then to
plan how I was going to get up enough gifts by next Christmas for children that may not have a Christmas the next year.
From that day until December 2006, I started looking for sales items at Wal-Mart and all of the Dollar Stores here in
Milan and Grants. I had over 13 big red totes full of clothes, shoes, books, and toys saved up by the next Christmas.
I contracted Roberta Place (place for batter women and their children), Casea San Josea (a place out side of Milan that
unwed mothers go for help before or after the baby is born), plus Future Fountation of America here in town where children
go in the afternoon after school. These places provide me names of children needing help in getting Christmas. I all so got
names off of the Angela Tree at Wal-Mart. In all I got 51 names to provide for. Dorothry Pouges, now a part of
JuneBug, provided me names at her school she work at. I asked Pat at NMSU if she knew any famlies that need help in providing
Christmas for their families. She gave me some names to work with.
I provide gifts for these 51 names and brought them to the places that provide me the names the Christmas of 2006. They
then past out the gifts to the correct children.
That how JuneBug Helping Hands got started, but then it was called Christmas 2006.
This year (Christmas 2007) so far I have received 131 names and looking for about 20 more names to come in (if not more)
before Christmas arrived.
