Widow and Orphan Day Part 2

As fortunate as I was to have had a very personal experience with the widows as I blogged about yesterday, I was equally blessed by what God had planned for me to do with the Orphans.

Orphan Day was led by some amazing young women in our group. Brianna was in charge of the day as a whole and Sarah was in charge of the infamous story number 27 (see last blog post).

I genuinely did not have a role for Orphan Day as far as the team was concerned, but God had other plans (as is usually the case!)

Let me back up a bit. At my church we have small groups called community groups. These groups are comprised of people who all live in the same community, who meet for worship and discussion about the sermon that week as well as a little food of course and just some good old down to earth friendship. This group becomes like family and does all kinds of different things together. Of course we pray together and study the word of God together, but more importantly, we effect our community for God's kingdom. A community group searches out organic needs in their community and with the love of Christ, finds ways to address them.

I live in Ambler Pennsylvania. My community group is fairly new and we had been praying for some time about where exactly God wanted to focus our efforts. Over the duration of quite some time, I had begun to feel a pull towards the Upper Dublin High School (and at the time I had thought separately) to St. Mary's Villa. 

I will try my best to explain....About a year ago I went to prayer walk the newly constructed high School in Upper Dublin with a dear friend. While we were there God spoke some very specific things into my heart that really didn't make much sense at the time. I had such strong feelings that I decided that the high school needed prayer daily, and as my son is a student there, began to pray every day after I dropped him off at school.

Every morning Jackson would walk up the steps to school and I would begin to pray. As I prayed over the months to come God pointed out particular students and urged me to pray for them. I continued to follow His Spirit's leading...day by day I bathed the building and the students and the community in prayer. To this day I am still praying for the high school and it's students and teachers...

Now I also started praying for the kids at St. Mary's Villa around this time. St. Mary's is a sprawling Mansion built on acres and acres of land in Ambler. It was once owned by a wealthy family and was then purchased by the Catholic church. At that time it was an orphanage for boys. After many years St. Mary's became a D.H.S. placement home for youth both male and female. They house up to 80 some children each year. The children are pulled from inner city homes for varying reasons and placed here in the middle of a wealthy suburban community. They are forced by the county to attend our local high school with in 48 hours of their arrival at St. Mary's.

There are some special needs children who study on campus, but the rest of the kids go to Upper Dublin High School. This infusion of inner city predominately African American children into a school filled with affluent suburban predominately Caucasian children has caused a few big clashes over the years.

The community does not understand the hardships that these kids have had to endure and over all treat them a bit like thugs who have set out with no reason to be violent and unruly. In reality, these kids are hurting and scared and abandoned , some abused in so many ways...and God loves them and wants them to know it.

There was a highly publicized fight between a group of St. Mary's residents and other kids from the community...there were "Town meetings" and "newspaper articles" honestly, all kinds of incoherent ranting going on...this is when God asked me to pray. To be honest, I began praying for peace between them all, but for protection as well. All of the stories flying around had said that the St. Mary kids were being violent and had attacked the other kids...but it didn't take long before God had me praying specifically for the St. Mary's children. He made my heart love them, He wanted them to know Him...He was longing to heal them and help them, to comfort them and make their lives abundant. God made it very clear what He wanted and I knew that He wanted me to be working with these kids.

To make a very long story still pretty long (hahaha see what I did there?) I ended up contacting St. Mary's in an effort to see what I could do. I told my community group that this is where God wanted me and I also thought, where he wanted us. Another member of the group and I went to meet with Carolyn Johnson the person in charge of new programs for the kids at St. Mary's.

Carolyn turned out to be a young vibrant loving woman with whom I instantly bonded. It was clearly evident how much she loved the children and she immediately made me and any ideas I had about working with the kids welcome. I got all of the paper work needed for my community group to get back round checks and child safety clearances to begin serving there in a volunteer capacity.

Some other time I will write more about what we are doing there because it is awesome what God has planned, but today I am writing about how He planned to get us started...

As I met with Carolyn I mentioned that I was going on a mission trip to Malawi Africa and asked if I could do a power point presentation when I came back feeling that the kids would connect to these orphaned kids in Malawi. Immediately she asked, "What can we do?" I gave her some items that we still needed to take over for the children there and we talked about a project that the St. Mary's kids could make. I went home praying, asking God what we should make...all that kept coming into my mind was "fabric and puzzle pieces...fabric and puzzle pieces". I called my friend Pat (a quilter, and basket weaver) and told her what I was thinking about. Before we got off the phone we had decided to make a quilt where the kids would decorate and write on some of the lighter quilt squares and then Pat would assemble the quilt without batting, and they could hang it in Esther's House in Malawi. I loved the idea of a unified gift which still had individual messages...perfect!

Our community group was gathering for a picnic that weekend, so Pat brought fabric. We picked out some fabric patterns and ironed and cut squares for her. When we were done we had made enough squares for two quilts. I made arrangements to go and work with the kids at St. Mary's.

We arrived and I explained where I was going and why. When I told them about the kids in Africa they sent them messages of love and encouragement...it was really beautiful. Kids who didn't normally let down their walls for good reason, began to soften as they worked on their project for others.

I am not really sure how it happened, but we realized that we had extra squares already cut and thought it would be a great idea for me to take squares over to Malawi with me so that the children there could send back messages to their new friends in America. 

While in Malawi I presented the finished quilt to the children of Esther's House. Every eye was glued on the quilt as I told them through the interpreter of these other children with out families in America who had made this for them. Their eyes lit up and they leaned forward on their seats to see each message as I read them...It was a beautiful thing!

Later that day, Brianna had them decorate their squares. I purchased some African fabric at a local market and brought everything home for Pat who has made a second quilt. My community group will be presenting this quilt to the St. Mary's residents very soon...but first, God had one more thing to do with this project...

As I mentioned earlier in this story, there had been a bit of bad press...articles about the disturbances between the St. Mary's children and the other Upper Dublin students in the local paper. I had told a few people what I was doing and someone suggested that this was such a "Good feeling story" that maybe it was news worthy.

So, for those of you who know me, the next step seemed inevitable...I immediately picked up the phone and called the Ambler Gazette. I got through right away to the reporter and told him my story, how I would carry one quilt from one group of kids thousands of miles to the other group and then back again...connecting these two. He loved it and this Friday I am doing an interview with him about the story. They will be taking the photos from my Malawi presentation and a photo from my St' Mary's presentation here in the U.S. and running the story in the paper.

People from this area will get a chance to see something good that happened at St. Mary's and hopefully start off the new school year with a bit less prejudice and a little more compassion.

Now that God has connected these two groups of children I am going to continue the ministry between them. Each will be hanging the quilt as a banner of love from the other...

This entire thing was God's idea...He is always connecting, always adding, always piecing together, making things whole...making things new! I am the luckiest girl in the world...I get to do His work!

"See, the former things have taken place, and new things I declare; before they spring into being I announce them to you." - Isaiah 42:9