Most winters, several women in my church work on making quilts for missions. Much of the fabric is donated by church members, by others in the community and by some of our neighboring churches no longer able to keep making quilts for missions.
The mission quilting has been going on in Lutheran churches for many years. Most of them make quilts for Lutheran World Relief, and the quilting ladies at our St. John Lutheran, in Tigerton, used to donate ours there also. However, a couple of years ago we decided to donate them to Orphan Grain Train instead.
In the past winters, as we had a box or two of quilts filled, I would haul them to Shawano and drop them off at St James Lutheran, or wherever they wanted them to go. However, this past winter, our quilting group could not get started until nearly spring because new flooring was going into our hall. Quilting was put on hold until the hall was finished.
We seldom got together, and much of the work was done at home. I am the one who patches big pieces of fabric together to make backs for the quilts, or we use sheets as backing. I also sewed quite a few quilt tops together over winter. One other lady sews quilt tops at home. In order to make tops, one of our ladies cuts apart old clothing and cuts them into blocks.
At church, a couple of ladies layer the tops and bottoms together, adding a filler if needed due to the thickness of the top and bottom layer. Then they are pinned, and another lady takes them home to sew around the edge. From that point, another woman in our church takes them home to tie the quilts.
So, while we enjoy working together most winters, it didn’t work that way this year. Because we were doing the work at home, it seemed nothing was accomplished. Somehow, hauling the boxes to Shawano was also forgotten.
Now that our church needs the hall cleaned up so tables can be readied for our annual harvest dinner, the quilting boxes were sitting in the way. So, one afternoon, with the help of youth from our church, boxes of things we are saving for the coming mission quilting season were carried away and put into storage. The boxes of finished quilts were loaded into my van for delivery to Shawano and the Orphan Grain Train.
I made a phone call, a time was set, and to my relief, there were three able and smiling gentlemen waiting at St. James for the delivery of the quilts. It was humbling to know that what a few women in Tigerton did filled a small need for those who pack and assemble things for shipment to the Orphan Grain Train. Wil Kleinschmidt explained to me that more things were coming from other churches.
Because of the humble efforts of a few here and there, a wonderful blessing is sent out into the world to those who need a warm blanket or quilt, or other items. While the ladies from St. John Quilters in Tigerton will never know or meet the people who receive the quilts, we know that the Lord will bless each recipient in a very special way.
Matthew, chapter 6 tells us to practice the gifts to the needy in secret. I write this column not to brag about what our mission quilters do, nor what anyone else does, but I was so inspired by the needs and the volunteers of the Orphan Grain Train, that I wanted others to know.
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