We’re moving! While the current location has served us well, the steering committee has felt for some time now that it doesn’t serve our guests as well as we wish it would. Our location in Onalaska is convenient for us, but not as convenient for the majority of the region’s teens in need, many of whom live on the north side of La Crosse with limited access to transportation, making it difficult to get to downtown Onalaska on weekends and evenings. While we have had success with our shuttle from the Children’s Clothes Closet at Trinity Lutheran Church, we believe there are many more teens we should be serving, so we are taking that collaboration to the next level.

The First Teen Clothes Closet is relocating to space available at Trinity Lutheran, so we can provide families with a single stop for clothing for both children and teens in a location that they can more easily access. We hope to be in place before the Aug. 13 shoe distribution and block party at Trinity.

Here’s how you can help:

• Pray for a smooth transition to our new location over the summer.
• Help with the transition itself—we will need volunteers to assist with taking clothes off the racks & shelves at the current location; disassembling & reassembling racks & shelves in our new location; and moving clothes to the new location to get everything set up. 

All of these tasks will be done from mid-July through early August. 

We’ll need willing hands and legs to relocate clothes from the second floor of the house to the downstairs so that the shelves can be taken down—this could be a great volunteer opportunity for teens!

We need a few mechanically-minded individuals to disassemble, move and reassemble all of the shelving and racks.

And then we’ll need more “movers” to get the clothes to Trinity and onto racks and shelves in our new location.

Specific dates and times are still being nailed down, so watch for information on the church and Clothes Closet Facebook pages or in the bulletin and additional emails. If you can help with one of these tasks, please contact a committee member or the church office so we can notify you directly when we have more specifics.

We will continue to use space at the house for sorting donations and having teens approve the clothes before offering them to our guests.

We hope the congregation will join us in our excitement about the potential we have to serve more teens in need by taking the clothes to where they live, rather than expecting them all to come to us.

First Teen Clothes Closet team: Lori Lunney, Shari Hegland, Bridget Crave, Patty Shepard

• firstlu.org/1stteencloset
• facebook.com/1stteencloset
• instagram.com/1stteencloset
• closet@firstlu.org