You may recall that almost one year ago we wrote about how we were inspired by the story of a woman who had the goal to sew 1000 dresses to send to little girls in Africa before she turned 100 years old. (She not only met, but she more than surpassed her goal!) Her story gave us the idea to make dresses for all of the girls who attend Kingdom Message Ministry School in the Philippines. After sending out a letter telling about the dress project, we had many people respond back very excited that they could participate. Ladies in Nebraska, Iowa, Illinois, Texas, and even the Czech Republic began sewing dresses; some of them even having “sewing bees.” If you are wondering who our seamstresses are, our lovely volunteers are grandmothers, mothers, single young ladies, and even some very talented young teenage sewers. Every dress they sewed was created unique to make each little girl feel special and loved.
Following you can see a few samples of the final product:
When we discussed making dresses for all the girls, we knew we wanted to do something special for the boys at Kingdom Message Ministry School, as well. An idea that several people had was to purchase new shirts for each of the boys. For this portion of the project we had some very special grandpas and grandmas who had it on their heart to provide the money needed to buy all the shirts.
After all the dresses were finished and all the shirts were purchased, they were then organized according to how many of each kind and size that was needed for each class. The dresses and shirts were bagged and labeled and prepared for the next leg of the journey.
It was for the mission trip to the Philippines this past February that Brother George Herrig so kindly offered to take the two extra suitcases needed to transport the 82 dresses and 98 shirts to the children. After delivering the packages to the administrator of KMMS, the dresses and shirts were distributed to the children. On Friday of that same week, all the children wore their new clothes to school. It was perfect timing for all the brethren who traveled to the Philippines for the mission trip to see and photograph the culmination of this portion of our project.
If you are wondering what the next portion is, well, efforts are already underway to sew dresses and purchase shirts for all the children in the Reaching Beyond Words program in Ethiopia. We will look forward to reporting on the success of this project as well! If you would like to participate in this or any of our upcoming endeavors, feel free to contact us at: info@rbwonline.org.
We would like to thank every single person who has been involved and contributed in any way to these projects. Acts 20:35b says, “It is more blessed to give than to receive.” This scripture has come to life in this endeavor for surely the joy and excitement of each volunteer has been infectious and marvelous to behold. Thank you for your exuberance and willingness to so freely give! Our desire in this project was to convey our love and encouragement to each of the children – to let them know that not only do we care about them, but even more, that Jesus loves them. The smiles on their faces and the beautiful thank you cards they created indicate that our mission was accomplished.
