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.
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!
Ellen
