SCOTTSBORO, Ala. — Life sometimes hands a person lemons. But a 7-year-old Alabama girl turned it into lemonade, selling the drink in front of her Scottsboro home to help pay for her recently deceased mother’s headstone.
Thanks to generous residents in the area, the headstone and funeral of Emouree Johnson’s mother has been paid for, the child’s grandmother, wrote in a Facebook post on Friday. Karli Bordner’s final resting place at Rehobeth Missionary Baptist Church Cemetery, Guntersville, will have a headstone.
The push to pay for the funeral began when the second-grader started selling lemonade to help buy the headstone. Karli Bordner died on March 13, according to her obituary. She was 29 and would have turned 30 on March 17, the Jackson County Sentinel reported. She was buried the day after her birthday.
Emouree’s grandmother, Jennifer Bordner, said the child came up with the idea of selling lemonade, WAFF-TV reported.
“Emouree is so special if you haven’t figured it out,” Bordner told the television station. “She’s the kid that will ... if this lady over here is hurt, she’ll take something to help her.”
The lemonade stand began with four lemons, and then the donations started pouring in.
“I really didn’t think anything of it,” Bordner told the Sentinel. “She said, ‘I just want to do it to help out with my mommy’s stuff.’ And she told me to take a picture of her and put it on Facebook.”
On Friday, neighbors, firefighters, nurses and deputies came by to buy a cup of lemonade for $1 each, WAFF reported. At one point, Emouree received several $100 bills from customers, according to the television station.
“Thank you. Thank God because of all of you,” Bordner wrote in her Facebook post. “Your kindness generosity love for Emouree her mother’s funeral is paid and the headstone is being donated thanks to everyone. I have never experienced something so amazing a gift from God for Emouree. This has been an amazing blessing I can’t say thank you enough.”
The donations went a long way, since Karli Bordner, who was a shift supervisor at an area Krystal’s fast-food restaurant, did not have insurance, the Sentinel reported.
“I hope my daughter can see how amazing this is and how especially wonderful her daughter is,” Bordner told WHNT-TV. “Thank you to everyone and thank God because this was one of the most painful things I ever experienced and this community has helped me.”
Emouree said that beauty and makeup are her passions, and she hopes to become a YouTube star someday. But for now, she is still amazed at what her gesture of selling drinks would achieve.
“I didn’t know just making a little lemonade would bring this many people to my house,” Emouree told the television station. “It’s fun, but it’s unbelievable at the same time.”
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