A Hundred Dresses

I believe that God sometimes uses the occurances in our daily routine of life to prompt us to do things we wouldn't necessarily choose on our own. And I believe he did that to me last week.

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Occurance #1 - a meeting with an aquaintance (now that I've had coffee with her and spent a morning with her, I'm going to call her my friend) from college who is in the process of adopting 3 (yes 3) children from the Congo.

Occurence #2 - an afternoon of sewing new curtains for Lewis' room.

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These two things may seem totally unrelated, but God fused them together and used them to put an idea in my mind. That idea is to sew dresses for little girls in Haiti. The number that is stuck in my mind - 100.

You see, I have recently been reminded more and more of my many material blessings, and I have been reminded that God doesn't want me to be a "blessing hoarder." So, what does he want me to do with my blessings? Well, there is this stirring deep inside of me to go get an orphaned child, and bring him/her home to love, but Corey and I are not at that place right now. That doesn't mean, however, that I'm off the hook when it comes to using my resources to care for them. Have you ever noticed how many times in the Bible taking care of orphans is mentioned? A lot. When God says something, he means it. When he repeats himself multiple times, I think it's because he REALLY means it.

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So, as I was sewing curtains, [You see, my mom taught me to sew when I was growing up. I wasn't always a very willing student, but I did learn. I would consider myself a mediocre seamstress at best, but my mom - she's good. Seriously, Vera Wang has nothing on her.] I started thinking about the little girls in Haiti who never get new clothes, and who are dependent on the kindness of others even for the few hand-me-down items they have. And I started thinking, I can sew. My mom can sew. My mom has lots of fabric. We can find some easy patterns that I can handle. We can buy more fabric. Maybe some of my friends would want to help...

That was how it started. I contacted Mission to Haiti, which is my favorite mission organization, and asked if they would distribute dresses if we made them. Well, they said yes, so I guess that means "game on."

I'm putting this out there for the readers of this blog in case anyone would like to help in some way. Can you sew? Do you have extra fabric? If you can't sew maybe you'd like to cut out the patterns for someone else to sew? Would you like to donate money for fabric or patterns or shipping? Please call me or email me or facebook me if you want to help in any way. I am excited to see how God help me follow through with this idea he placed in my head!