A time to tear apart and a time to sew together.” Ecclesiastes 3:1,7
In March, 2006, Clarkston United Methodist members made their first trip to the Midwest Mission Distribution Center in Chatham, Illinois. We were excited to assist the distribution center in assembling flood buckets, packing school bags full of school supplies, gathering items for health kits, building school desks, and sewing school bags, hospital gowns, and quilts. After stopping for dinner in nearby Springfield, we heard tornado sirens as we headed to our vans. Slightly alarmed we still drove to the grocery store for supplies before heading to the mission. .
Just as we were pushing our full carts toward the grocery doors and parking lot, a thunderous noise and whirling wind whooshed into the doors and windows: splintering glass, turning papers and brochures into dust devils and scattering our group into nearby restrooms as all the lights went out. Indeed those warning sirens we’re right!!
After forty five minutes on the bathroom floor we headed to the mission which was not damaged but without power. The next morning the mission still did not have power and we were in a quandary. Chatham was not expected to get power until much later, Springfield had suffered extensive damage and its needs were greater. Without power, we could do nothing but learn about MMDC’s services and then head back to Clarkston.
Supremely disappointed and saddened we hadn’t accomplished something, it was a long trip home. But…wait…maybe I could learn from this storm? Since I couldn’t sew there, I could sew at home. I could even ask others, who probably never would get to experience a trip to MMDC, to sew with me. Our church could begin our own Mercy Threads. Four years and hundreds of outfits and quilts later we are still sewing.
This Mother’s Day, 2010, our church sent another group to MMDC, the sixth trip since 2006, the fifth for me. Before we left we set up over a hundred quilts, outfits and sweaters in front of the church sanctuary. Our dear pastor, who can even talk up a pink baby sweater with passion, wound the story of our mission trips and Mercy Threads into his sermon. What a send off!!
No tornadoes since the first one so we have been able to achieve something at MMDC as well as at our home church. We have built school desks for third world countries, filled flood buckets for U.S. cities, made school bags and health kits and filled them, and packed layette kits for new mothers in Haiti. This list covers just a small amount of what MMDC accomplishes. Check out their website for amazing details of their mission midwestmissiondc.org/
Expectations so often mar the way of true mission. We think we have it all figured out and suddenly we don’t at all. God devises a different plan, a different outcome. But, if we’re very quiet and listen with prayerful discernment, we can hear Him reassuring us, holding our hand and guiding us toward His mission for us.
