The Darfur Project

(Bag-free Friday)
Just this morning, I was thinking about how sewing bags is so perfect. One size fits all. No custom orders. Every day, a new combination of colours, designs, and textures. No poorly ventilated fabric stores to sweat through, wait endlessly for someone to cut yardage, and pay through the schnozz for cheap fabric. No cutting patterns. No buying patterns.


And that's just one small aspect of what I love about all this.
There is working at home. Multi-tasking with the whir and buzz of kids around me. Meeting new people. Re-purposing fabrics. And being witness to a selfless group of people who support the project in so many and varied ways.


I think that "eclectic bags" will continue to surprise, inspire, and delight us for some time. I have found myself praying for direction lately, as I sort and stack, snip and pin, (and fantasize about a great, great big studio to spread out in).... I pray for a sense of how to go about all of this. All of it. The human interactions, the management of e-mails and blogs, the cutting and sewing, the fund-raising, time management, and balance. I really need God's hand in all of this because its imperative that this project doesn't pull other important aspects of life out of my sphere of concern.


But I always remember that it was the pull of God on my heart to start it in the first place. So I don't exactly have to sweat the big picture, just keep asking, remain quiet amidst the noise, and always be mindful that it takes a village and a good God to effectively turn a heap of discarded fabric into grain and rice for a refugee camp somewhere in a place I might never actually see.


And I am sincerely grateful that I have you all in the "village". It is an amazing thing to watch and be a part of.


We'll be back, with bags, starting Monday, August 18.