Huggles For Ethiopia

I have had this thought on my mind for a while but have not really known how it can come to fruition...I wanted to be able to bless the children of Ethiopia with something that will say "We love you and are thinking of you".

Our church is involved in many missions, Compassion Australia along with our church Catalyst Church in Ipswich sponsor children in Ethiopia. A couple of the most amazingly big hearted generous women I know are involved in our Ethiopia missions, they inspire me to want to help in whatever way I can.
Enter Lucky (Leanne) who is the lovely generous Lady who has created the Huggle (or softie) for kids. take a look at my last post to read about some of what she has managed to get sorted out for our trip to Grantham school to bless the children there.

So back to my thought...how can we bless the children of Ethiopia, I know how about sending Huggles for the children the next time there is a missions trip.
good idea....well it just so happens there is a trip planned for mid September this year...great.

OK Ladies it is all worked out, we need to make at least 100 Huggles to send with our mission trippers to Ethiopia in September. we need the huggles to be not much bigger than 8" x 8"  the reason for this is room,  for the little toys to be transported over they need to fit into the backpacks of the Missionaries amongst their clothing and other stuff they need to take.
we need to make sure also that they are only filled with fibre fill...as this will guarantee to keep the weight down.
*Use Bright Colours

*Embroider or draw on the eyes so as not to cause a choking hazard

Teddy Pattern here..
or Owl pattern here..
other patterns here...
Doll Pattern Here...
Gingerbread Doll Here...

We have approximately 6 months to get these little toys made and posted in to Me (email me for the address) in order to get them to the missionaries and packed up for delivery to the children.
 if you go to Leanne's blog you can read all about her past fun with making and distributing Huggles to many well deserved recipients.
Just a little note so you are aware, Ethiopia is a predominantly Muslim country so we do request that you do not send cute little piggies, as much as I love them they are not really appropriate for this country.

Our Missionaries are also involved in Grace Centres in Ethiopia, you can read about the great things they do by going to their web page.

I will post a Huggles Roll on the side of my blog to keep track of who is making Huggles for Ethiopia, that is probably more for me than anyone (getting old).

I really appreciate the generosity and heart that so many of you wonderful ladies put in to your creative works, I am so happy to be able to guide you into a very worthy cause...Huggles for Ethiopia.

Happy Sewing

Amanda

A fabulous couple of Days...

On Friday Khristina of Sew Prim Khris, Helena, Bev and I took a very wet drive out to Grantham to deliver some wonderful little Huggles to the local school children who had survived a horrendous flood in January of this year (2011).

Leanne creator of Huggles for kids had organized for people to make Huggles and made many herself, Have a read on her blog about them and what she does with them.

Here is Khristina with the school Principle in their little library...there were enough Huggles for each student.

The principle will take pictures of the kids with their Huggles and post them off to Leanne...she expressed how happy they were to have these lovely little gifts, and explained how important they could be for the students to help them move on..."some children take a special toy to bed and will talk through things with their toy" she said, so the potential to help them beyond what we imagined is there.

After visiting the school we went on to Gatton to take some of the quilts to a family who had lost all of their belongings, both the mother and mother in law and most tragic of all their 2 year old daughter...

After such tragic loss you would imagine that these people would be basket cases...not so. i found that both Matthew and Stacy were handling this amazingly, they are well aware of the potential this tragedy has to really sink them as a family...they are so determined not to let that happen, they have two surviving children and a little girl due in 7 weeks for whom they must go on.
they are awesome people and like most of us prefer to do their grieving in private...
I did not feel comfortable taking pictures of them so I did not ask...but just know that the quilts that the ladies in the C-r-a-f-t group made for them were well accepted and will be much loved.

On saturday morning (more rain) Khristina and Helena came over to my place for a lovely cup of tea...then we went on to another family that I knew of from church who had lost everything in the flood...we gave them a beautiful quilt for each child and a stunning heart quilt for Mum...they were very happy to receive such wonderful gifts...

Here is Naomi with baby Ezra who was one week old when they had to evacuate their home and lost most of their belongings...they managed to grab the precious photographs as they left...

the Ladies of our C-r-a-f-t- online group outdid themselves in making the quilts and some of the Huggles...these Ladies are from all over the world including the United States, UK, NZ and Australia...they all contributed greatly to making these quilts, whether it was by making hearts or donating funds to help or just their encouragement of the ladies who got together to physically put the quilts together.
I think they are awesome...

Khristina says on her blog..."Thank you to Lucky, Amanda, Terry, Christine, Pam, Melissa, Judy, Sheila and the ladies in my CRAFT group who have sent hearts . Sorry if I have missed any specific names but I thank you so very much for your help, generosity and kindness".

we had some time to kill on friday afternoon so guess where we went ladies???

The ladies who are coming to the retreat in October will have to wait till then to go to Bargain Box...
We got to play a while, we are very happy they survived the Floods...

thanks for reading my little blog, if you want to join the craft ladies just follow the links and apply to join...
As a final note, I just want to say that no matter how hard life seems sometimes, there is always someone doing it harder than us...hug your kids and loved ones and thank God we areble to do just that..
Happy Stitching

Amanda