Handmade quilts offer comfort to ill (Rindy Metcalf, Reporter) 07-24-2006

Quoted from the Ruston [Louisiana] Daily Leader http://www.rustonleader.com/news.php?id=1539 :

Thread, fabric and prayers.Those items are all that is needed to comfort a friend in a time of need, Letty Strawbridge, associate pastor of the Jonesboro-Hodge United Methodist Church, said.

In fact, three years ago it was a friend who gave Strawbridge the idea to use these items to make quilts in conjunction with the Prayers and Squares Ministry.“A friend of mine in Alexandria told me about an organization called Prayers and Squares,” Strawbridge said. “She said I could go to the Web site (www.prayerquilt.org) and get all kinds of information, so I did that and signed up.”

At that time she pastored in Choudrant, and when she signed up the Methodist church there, the organization sent a package with pins, labels and needles to help her begin the quilt ministry.“What you do is you make a quilt top; you can make a lap quilt depending on the size of the fabric,” Strawbridge said. “Then you just pull the thread through. If someone is ill, we put it in the fellowship hall, and each person that goes in and says a prayer for that person ties a knot in the thread. Then you take it and give it to the person. You can say that the person is covered in prayers.”

Strawbridge said that at some of her churches, the group has expanded its ministry into knitting shawls for those who lose a family member.But, Strawbridge said, the most exciting part of the ministry has been when she got a notice from a friend she met in a hospital’s Intensive Care Unit waiting room.“I was at Glenwood with someone who had surgery, and I met one of her friends,” Strawbridge said.

“She had a fit because of the prayer quilt, so she went back to her church and started (a prayer quilt group).”Kimberly Winston, a 2005 recipient of the 2005 American Academy of Religion awards for Best In-depth Reporting on Religion, is the author of “Fabric of Faith: A Guide to the Prayer Quilt Ministry,” which was published last month.

She said while in the process of gathering information for the book, she has seen the effect giving and receiving a prayer quilt has on people.“I think the most interesting thing that I’ve found is basically everyone I talked to got involved in the ministry because they wanted to give something back, and they found in their participating in the ministry that they got so much more than they were giving,” Winston said.

“People all over the country told me about how the time they spent in prayer while quilting had taken them further on their faith journey than they thought would happen, and so while they set out to help others, they found that they were really helping themselves.”

Winston also said that while the prayer quilt ministry started in California, the message of its comfort has spread from California to North Carolina and to half a dozen foreign countries.“It’s as if each quilt plants a seed,” Winston said. “Somebody gives one to somebody whose church doesn’t have it, and people want to get involved.”

Also, though the ministry began in the Methodist church, it is often affiliated with most Protestant denominations and the Catholic church, as well.“