'Mission of the Heart' -- Volunteers restore dolls to 'lovability'

Eleven-year-old Morgan Rodgers dresses a pouty-face baby doll, while her 9-year-old sister, Kailee, trims the tresses on a style-challenged toddler doll, all in preparation for the 2010 McCook Toy Box gift give-away Sunday, Dec. 19. The girls volunteer for the "Mission of the Heart" doll restoration project at First Congregational Church in McCook, Nebraska. (Connie Jo Discoe/McCook Daily Gazette)

McCOOK, Nebraska -- The dolls arrive in all imaginable stages of love overdose and disarray, and leave ready to be loved again with clean hair, new dresses, and underpants. All of them must be wearing panties.

Every year for the past six years, the women, and young girls, of First Congregational Church in McCook, Nebraska, have opened their hearts -- and a former Sunday School classroom -- to restore tattered dolls to their former states of lovability, ready for new homes with new little girls on Christmas morning.

Bev Green of McCook said the church's "Mission of the Heart" restores hundreds of dolls each year for the McCook Toy Box give-away. Most of the dolls that the "Mission" volunteers restore are those placed in the Toy Box collection receptacles; others are donated directly to the church's doll project. The women start on the restoration projects usually in October.

A former Sunday School classroom has been dedicated to the dolls, and is filled with dolls in boxes, doll clothes of all sizes and fashion, material to make doll clothes and boxes of laces and ribbons. "We even have a hair station," Bev said.

Bev said that most of the material and ribbons and lace have been donated. "We don't turn anything down," she said. If clothes donated for the dolls seem to be big enough for real babies, they're donated to a thrift shop. "Very little goes to waste," Bev said.

On a recent Saturday, sisters Morgan and Kailee Rodgers sorted through stacks of doll clothes, trying to find just the perfect outfit for the dolls they held. Each needed a blouse and slacks, or maybe a dress. And, according to the women's protocol, underpants. Unless they're wearing jeans or long pants of some sort, the dolls must be wearing underpants. "They all must have panties," Bev said, smiling.

Morgan said that she and Kailee have volunteered for several years. "Mom started helping when I was little, and we just came along," Morgan said. Kailee added, "I have dolls, and it's just fun to help."

Two new-comers to McCook enjoy the camaraderie, the fellowship, while they're dressing dolls and fixing hair. Rose Dickerson is a relative new-comer, having lived in McCook six years after 36 years in Arizona. "We love it here," Rose said. "My husband and I both come from small towns."

Claire Lorincz is from North Carolina, and is house-sitting a cousin's home across the street from the church. She enjoys the company and getting to know McCook and its people. "I volunteer because I can," she said, with a chuckle.

McCook's Toy Box give-away is Sunday, Dec. 19, at 1 p.m., at the Nebraska Army National Guard Armory. Shoppers are asked to use only the east doors and not to bring boxes, bags and sacks with them.

The give-away is open to anyone with a need, and a heart-felt desire to make a child's Christmas happier.