Quilts of Compassion January 6-10, 2016

My passions collided last summer when I had the opportunity to go to Tupelo, MS following the tornadoes that devastated the area. I'm a Tupelo girl, and I immediately committed to go serve with Eight Days of Hope, a disaster response ministry based in Tupelo. I'd taken a team of 10 middle school girls and their parents to eastern NC in Pamlico County with Eight Days a couple of years ago after a hurricane, and my sweet hubby had also served with Eight Days in MS four years ago after a terrible tornado system. Anyway, we signed up to go to Tupelo for all eight days of ministry to do drywall work. I told that story here.

Then, I stumbled upon a Facebook post about Quilts of Compassion, and their plan to go to Tupelo at about the same time. I contacted Janice Grimes, the director and founder of QOC, and offered to longarm some donations, and gather all I could bring and meet her there. It escalated (as these things tend to do) into my joining her Disaster Response Team, along with my daughter Mallory, and actually delivering quilts in the area for four days. You can read about my journey with the quilts I made (I think I took 25), the friends I made who donated tops, backings, bindings...from all over the country here in this post.

As a 1990 graduate of the University of South Carolina, I have a lot of loyalty to the city of Columbia, SC as well. When South Carolina experienced such horrific flooding in October 2015, I knew I was called to go again with Quilts of Compassion, and contacted Janice to discuss deployment dates and times. But in the meantime, my sweet husband felt a need to go immediately, so he responded with Eight Days of Hope's new Rapid Response Division, Hope Reigns. He spent three weeks in October, directly interviewing homeowners, assigning teams to aid them in removal of drywall, insulation, and sometimes flooring and ventwork. So much demolition has to follow the insidious nature of flooding, before mold sets in. The statistics we heard were that more than 70,000 FEMA case numbers were assigned. The devastation is so wide spread.

This is what my foyer looks like RIGHT NOW. (You'll notice I have not started putting away Christmas yet.) I have a significant pile of quilts made by my local team, plus a generous donation from Dare County (NC)'s Project Linus group.

And so, we are going back with Quilts of Compassion this week. If you are a quilter, consider making and donating a finished quilt (large bed quilts are always needed and in shorter supply) at any time during the year. Sadly, there are always enough disasters to go around. If you don't quilt, but would like to support this ministry, please consider a cash donation. But whatever you do, please pray for the people who are struggling to pick up the pieces of their lives, and rebuild or relocate from a catastrophic natural disaster. Thank you to all of my team who met locally at Christ Presbyterian Church in Winterville, NC (stay tuned for announcements of when we'll be meeting again) to actually make quilts, and to pray. Thank you to my church family for covering me and my hubby in prayer as we serve. Thank you to all of the extended quilty friends who sent tops through the mail, or dropped off finished quilts, or just handed me a check to buy batting or backing material.

Happy New Year! I'll have some reports from the road, and we'll be back to quilting business as usual next week.

I'm posting this picture because you need to see that the pile of quilts is as tall as I am. I think I've got over 200 in my foyer, with more on their way from Ohio in the Quiltmobile for donation to the areas affected.

Lori