October Meeting

In October we made pillowcases out of Christmas fabric for the children who live at Soaring Wings Ranch.  It is a wonderful non-profit, non-denominational organization that provides a home for children ages 6-17 who are either neglected, abandoned, abused, or in need of a strong family support structure.  You can learn more about this organization by visiting their website:  http://www.soaringwingsranch.com/ . 

We hope that these festive pillowcases will bring them Christmas cheer and joy and bring a smile to their face during this holiday season!

September Meeting

September's project was sewing Taggies.  We made 30 Taggies that will be donated to the C.A.L.L. to be given to babies/toddlers when they come into foster care.  If you are not familiar with the call, I would encourage you to take a minute to check out there website.  http://www.thecallinarkansas.org/  The C.A.L.L. is a wonderful non-profit organization that educates and then helps Christian families foster and adopt through the state (DHS).  It was through this organization that my husband and I first became aware of the need in Arkansas, and as a result, we are excited to say God has chosen to grow our family in this way.  So, once again we had tons of fun making these adorable Taggies that we pray will bring comfort to a scared, lonely child who has been taken from the only home that they know.
                                                                                                                                             (Ellen)

Here is the finished project.  They turned out so cute!

Mrs. Louise cutting ribbon

The ribbon cutting table  :)

Mrs. Kay helped Annie sew her first creation.  It was so fun to see how excited Annie was.....she has always wanted to learn how to sew (which is why she came to volunteer).  You would have thought she had won the lottery she was so excited!!  :)

The sewing crew  :)

Mrs. Kay cutting ribbon

Mrs. Pam quick-stitching

Mrs. Sue cutting fabric

It was a successful morning!  God continues to blow me away by continuing to bring more willing hands and more materials, etc.

Our August Meeting

     Once again we had a fun and productive time at our meeting Saturday morning!  We had fifteen volunteers that got to come and help.  All the dolls are almost complete.  We only need to glue on the braided hair and finish the faces. 
     Some of the ladies were nice enough to even take some fabric home to make skirts for the girl dolls.  It isn't required, but it makes them extra cute!  We have around forty dolls to donate and are still in the process of determining where to send them.  There is a ministry that we can send the dolls to and they will distribute them or we can send them with our local missionaries when they travel to share the gospel.  I know that God has a plan for these dolls and He already know the name of each child that will receive one.  Our prayer is that God will be able to reveal Himself to each child and their family through the dolls.  Here are a few pics from the day!!

Here is the pile of dolls that we circled around and prayed for their recipients

We have yummy snacks when we work, too!!  You know a girl gets hungry!  :)

We were excited to have several of our children to volunteer as well.

Patti, Jennifer, and Granny Sue busy sewing! 

Myriam working on a boy doll.

Mrs. Kay was great at cutting out the material!

The three sweetest volunteers were Naomi, Sara, and Victoria!  :)

I am looking forward to our next meeting on September 24!  We are praying about our next project. 

Our July Meeting

We met on Saturday, July 9, to begin our next project, Salvation Dolls.  A salvation doll is a doll that can be used as a witnessing tool.  On one side there is a frown, symbolizing life before Christ.  On the other side there is a  smile, symbolizing life full of joy after knowing Christ.  Many mission groups have successfully used these dolls to share the gospel around the world.  One of our sweet volunteers, Mary Katherine Webster, remembered reading about these dolls in a 2010 issue of Mosaic Missions, and shared the idea with Nitzia, our sewing guru.  After researching the dolls, Nitzia felt that this should be our next project!  She has posted specifics about making the dolls under the "Project" tab.

When we saw that the title of the magazine article was:  "Sewing Seeds of Kindness,"  it confirmed that this was the perfect project for us!  As always, we worked hard, but had tons of fun as we sewed and sowed!  :)

Ashley, measuring and cutting

Ashley, Angie, and Kay cutting and hand stitching

Nizia ironing while Sara takes a break and gets a snack

Sara, our youngest volunteer.  She kept telling everyone about her sewing machine that she has....wouldn't be surprised if next month she isn't on the "sewing crew"

Sherry and Montie, part of the "sewing crew."

Sweet Granny Sue---she is our angel.  She brought homemade biscuits and homemade jelly to share with everyone!

The whole group after we prayed over the dolls and the lives that would be touched by them.

We missed a few of our regulars who were out of town and were excited to have a few new faces!  The dolls are only half-way completed, so we plan to finish them up our next meeting.  Similar to the fleece blankets, we are praying that God will lead us as to where to send the dolls when they are finished.

Delivering the Fleece Blankets to Children in Peru

Two of the ladies who volunteer with this ministry (Erica and Ashley) went with a group from our church on a mission trip the end of June to Cajamarca, Peru.  They took our completed blankets with them, with the mission of distributing them to children in need.  They planned to visit several orphanages and schools.  So as we prayed over the blankets and who God would have receive them, we felt like God would lead them to the right children when they were there.  And God does not fail.

On the Sunday that they were there they traveled up into the mountains to an even more rural area to attend the church service at the small church there.  It was these people that God led them to share the blankets with, because it is even colder at this higher elevation than in Cajamarca and these families were very poor (in worldly standards).

Thank you God for being faithful.  Please make yourself real to these people as they draw warmth from the blankets that they wrap themselves in.

Our Second Meeting

Our mission group, Sewing the Seed, met again this past Sunday night to finish up the fleece blankets that we are sending to the orphanage in Peru.  We made over twenty blankets in one night!!!!  We will normally always meet on Saturday mornings, but we had a deadline to get the blankets completed.  There were eight or nine ladies there again at this meeting and we worked hard whipping out these blankets!  Two of our volunteers left today to go with a group to Peru and they took the finished blankets with them.  They will be hand delivering them to the orphanage.  The past two summers I was able to visit the orphanage there, so I am so excited to see how it goes for them and see pictures!!  

  Here are a few pics of some of the ladies working! 

Sherry and Miriam busy sewing!

Sherry, Miriam, and Granny Sue.....all working away!

Hannah is cutting trim around the edges of a finished blanket!

(This post was originally written on June 17, 2011 on Ellen's personal blog, Pass the Salt.)

Our First Meeting

We had eight ladies that got to come and partcipicate in the first work day!  Since it was Memorial Day weekend, there were several more that wanted to be a part, but were either out of town or with family. 

Here are some pictures of our time together:

Ashley measuring and cutting fleece for one of the blankets that will be
given to a child who lives at the orphanage in Peru.

Nitzia helping Mary Katherine cut fabric for one of the pillows that will be donated to
Arkansas Children's Hospital.

Pam cutting fabric for a pillow.  She didn't last long on this and decided
she preferred to stuff the pillows with the batting.  Ha!

Nitzia helping Erica measure more fleece for the blankets.

Pam cutting fabric.  She is so much fun, I smile just looking at this picture.

Our faithful seamstresses:  Kacey and Sue (or Granny Sue, as she says she prefers to be called)

There's Pam, stuffing away!!!

Sweet ladies posing for a picture.



Erica cutting fringe around a finished blanket.



Ellen and Nitzia

Yeah!!!!  This is documentation of the first finished blanket. 

Here's the whole crew from Saturday!!  We were able to complete eight fleece blankets and ten pillows
during our time together.  Plus we had tons of fun doing it! 

One neat thing is that two of the girls who are volunteering their time to help with this ministry are going with our church to Peru this summer.  So, they will get to hand deliver the blankets for us!!

I thought the day went perfect.  There was a lot of working, but also a lot of laughing and enjoying each other's company.  It was fun working together towards a common goal.  I loved seeing how these women have a heart for missions just as much as Nitzia and I do.  I also love that the group ranges in age and as the group hopefully continues to grow, I look forward to getting to know more ladies that I would otherwise not get to spend a lot of time with.  And God is being faithful with providing supplies and bringing different projects to our attention.  Right now we are working on finishing enough fleece blankets for every child at the orphanage in Peru and the pillows to be donated to AR children's hosptial, but there are already other projects that we are looking to work on in the future. 

How We Got Started

     I am very excited to share with you about a ministry that a friend and I have started.  For awhile God had been prodding me about this ministry opportunity and once I finally took the step to move forward, He has been faithful.

     Eight years ago, when I was pregnant with my first child, Victoria, my husband bought me a sewing machine for Christmas. Both of my grandmothers were great seamstresses, but I had never taken the time to learn myself.  I have many memories of them making things for me and also for my dolls.  So, as a new stay-at-home mom, I wanted to learn.  After getting my sewing machine, my mom and I purchased a lot of cute fleece and cute ribbons to make taggies (if you don't know what a taggie is, google it).  My mom, my sister-in-laws, and I made taggies for our babies and for our friends' babies.  The taggies were super cute, but once our kids started getting older, we didn't have time to sew, and all the materials got stored away.

  I ran across that tub of fleece in my garage awhile back and thought it would be a great idea to create a home-based business making taggies to bring in some extra income.  My friend, Nitzia, who has her own sewing business gave me some pointers, but then I learned that taggie has a strict patent.  I realized that if I was going to use that fleece to make taggies, then they could only be gifts or I could donate them.  That is when the lightbulb went off and God began to give me the vision for this ministry.  Wouldn't it be great to get ladies from the church together to sew and spend time together  with a common goal of producing pieces to be donated to people who are in need?

 After several months of throwing that idea around in my head, I sent an email out to my Sunday school class to see if anybody else would be interested in being apart.  My friend, Nitzia (who had given me some pointers before and even allowed me to help her with her booth at a craft show), immediately emailed me back.  And the coolest thing was that I could tell that she was just as excited about this as I was.  She commented that this was something that she had been wanting to do for quite some time.  I just knew that God had called us both to this.....we became a team with a common goal. 
    
     We began talking about specifics and what the ministry would look like and where we felt like God was leading us.  We began researching needs and possible people and places to help.  Before we had even advertised the ministry,  a lady who knew that Nitzia sewed came up to her at church and told her that she had tons of fabric that she would like to donate to Nitzia if she had anything that she could do with it!!  Isn't that amazing??!!  God is always faithful.  Someone else also donated money, so that we were able to purchase some other supplies that we needed.  We talked to the women's director at our church and she was very supportive.  So, a lot of background info to say that:  this past Saturday was our first meeting!!!!

Sewing the Seed:
Our mission statement:  Sewing the Seed is a mission opportunity for ladies in the church to spend time together sewing and creating things to donate to children who are in need.  The purpose is to meet a child's needs with tangible love and comfort, so that they might experience and know the ultimate love and comfort that only God can give.    The possible projects that can be completed through this ministry are endless.  We want to reach children in foster care, orphanages, extended hospital stays, poorer nations. 

Our mission verses:  2 Corinthians 9:6-15

Our prayer is that through our sewing, we will be planting and sowing seeds in people that will someday result in their salvation.  Each piece that is donated will have a tag attached that will include our logo and a note explaining that the piece was handmade by someone who cares and that the recipient has been prayed for specifically. 

We are just normal women, but because of our obedience, God can do some extraordinary things through us.  Can't wait to see what He has planned!

(This post was originally written on May 31, 2011 on Ellen's personal blog, Pass the Salt.)