Pieced with Love

I so enjoy looking back and seeing how seemingly random events in my life join together to bring about an interesting result.

A few weeks ago I finished reading a book entitled, A Hole in Our Gospel written by the president of World Vision. Basically the book was calling us to re-examine if we are doing enough to meet the needs of those who live life  without. Without food, without water, without the basics of life. As a part of the book, he challenged the reader to consider taking things that you already enjoy doing and do those things to assist those who are without. And even better, get others to join you in the process.

I was finishing this book the same time that I had the privilege of working with a group of ladies in preparing a wedding rehearsal dinner for a family that we all love and appreciated. We spent two days cutting, chopping, and preparing food together. It was work, of course, but we had a wonderful time sharing together as we worked. I realized how much I missed spending extended time working with other women.

When I was a young mom, I had begun doing some quilting. It is something I've done here and there, off and on. As my boys got older, I spent more of my time on their education and less on sewing projects. In the past few years, I've worked on sewing curtains and other projects  for our home, but had not gotten back into quilting.

However, having grandbabies changed that. I made a small quilted wall hanging when Judah was born. I then decided to make small quilts for each grandchild. I finished Micah's when he was a few months old and then began one for Judah. I was almost finished with Judah's when the idea came.  What if I get a group of women together and we make some quilts and then donate them to some organization that works in the third world as a way to provide something for those who do without? My individual efforts might be small, but as a group we could accomplish so much more.

I didn't know what organization to donate these to, but I decided to contact some friends and see if they were interested in joining with me while I began making contacts.  I had a number of women who said they would be interested, either at the initial time or at future sewing times.

Thinking of a number of individuals and groups, I first contacted the sister of one of my daughters-in-law. She is currently doing an internship in northern Indian at a Christian hospital.  Her blog posts often commented on the heat they were dealing with, but I wrote her anyway, although doubtful that the hospital there would be able to use baby quilts.  Her initial response was that she thought they could be she would confirm that with the hospital administration.

I heard back from her just a few days before our first scheduled sewing time.  Her email brought tears to my eyes.

The response I got from Dr. Sunitha was overwhelming so let me give you the brief story. The winters here are actually very cold considering there is no heating systems. The temperatures can plunge into the 50s and even 40s overnight and there has been days where it is close to freezing. While that may not seem too cold, it is incredibly cold when the only source of warmth is blowers in the hospital (run by the generator) and heated coils they put in the houses. Brr! Because of this cold, when babies are born, it is difficult to keep them warm and baby blankets/quilts are always needed. Some of the other hospitals that are a part of EHA have different groups around the globe that make quilts or blankets and send them to the hospitals so that they can use them for newborns and then give them to the families once they are discharged. However, Broadwell Christian Hospital does not have any such donor and has been relying on random volunteers who come through and send batches at a time. Just last year after a cold winter they were praying that God would work in someone's heart to donate baby quilts on a regular basis especially as the cold winter months begin in late November and continue through February.All of that to say, they were incredibly excited to hear about you starting up this group and wanting to know if we could use them. Dr Sunitha's response when I asked her? "YES!!" 

They prayed and God laid it on my heart through seemingly random activities to make baby quilts.  And as you can see, we have a great start.  Six cut out and one pieced and in the process of being quilted. What a mighty God we serve!!