Dresses of Hope.
That's where it all began for me.
Two years ago I heard about a team from Mosaic Church preparing to go to
the Dominican Republic, and something inside me sparked to life with a desire
to collect dresses to send to the little girls in the rural mountain village
where the team would be serving. Wanting
to be bold and dream big, I asked God for one hundred dresses. Ha! He
gave me a hundred and fifty! The enthusiasm
of the girls receiving the dresses was so great that I determined to do it
again for the next trip, with ideas for how to do it even better. One of the betters was to include others in
the preparation as well as the donations.
The blessing I got from preparing all those dresses for the 2011 trip
was too much to keep all to myself again, so I solicited volunteers to help
process the 181 dresses that were donated for 2012. We spent many hours making cards, doing minor
mending, ironing out the wrinkles to make every dress look like new, and
pinning a lovely card to each dress with a ribbon. Oh, and most important of all, we prayed over
each dress for the girl who would receive it.
Lin making tiny bows to glue to cards
Sherilin
Lucia
Gloria
Claudia
Lin mending
Cards for dresses
And more cards
Piles of finished dresses ready to send
The message handwritten inside each little card says:
"Little girl, you are precious to God. We pray that
every time you wear this dress you will remember
how much Jesus loves you."
That load of dresses was then divvied up among the team
members for transporting in our suitcases along with other goodies that had
been collected for little boys and for the clinic. We were instructed to plan one suitcase for
our personal things and one suitcase for gifts we were taking.
It has been reported to me that the first year Dresses of Hope came to Pedregal it was
disorganized and confusing, as those doing the distribution hadn't had time to
figure out a systematic plan of action.
From that first experience, however, Sharyn came up with a strategy that
would smooth out the biggest bump in the process, which was how to keep someone
from getting more than one dress while someone else got none. The word quickly spread that dresses were
going to be given out on Monday at 3:30, and by 3:00 the porch of the clinic
was crammed with expectant niñas and madres who appeared on foot from every
direction like ants to a picnic. Mechi,
the clinic secretary, stood in the doorway taking down names. Dozens of names. As the first page filled up with two columns
of names she began a second page, quietly keeping the rambunctious crowd from
bulldozing the door.
Waiting for dress giveaway to begin
Mechi taking down names
Meanwhile, Kristi and I wiped buckets of sweat from our
brows while holed up in the tiny storage room, doing our best not to stumble
too many times over the suitcases and bags overflowing with dresses, while we sorted
and organized them according to size.
Staging area for dresses in the storage/exam room
When
the piles were ready we hauled them out the back door to the gazebo where they
were flopped across the walls for easy access when the gate was opened and the girls
were allowed access to our free dress store.
Somehow Mechi and Sharyn managed to keep the crowd under
control and permitted only a limited number of girls to go back to the gazebo
at one time. Kristi, Debbie and I would quickly
size up a customer and make a few selections til we found one that was a good
fit and also to her liking, then send her on her way with a hug, a smile and a
dress tucked under her arm.
Here they come
And so it
continued for 45 minutes, at which time we closed shop for the day and learned
that we had given dresses to 70 beautiful little girls.
