Journey Bags

I have to tell you about the awesome ‘Journey Bags’ we will be taking with us on our trip to Ghana. The idea of the journey bags all started when a fellow blogger and adoptive mom read this from Day 6 of my Ghana journal posts from our first trip:

Towards the end of the service we got to pass out the goodie bags for the children. When Kofi saw the bags he said they were great and he noted that many of the children would use the sacks for their school bags to carry their books! Well, if I would have known that I would have gotten them some more durable sacks than these 50 cent ones. I hope they last!

Something in the heart of my friend was stirred up when she read that excerpt, and a few days later I received an email from her regarding her plans to hand-sew bags for the children of Samuel’s village for us to take with us on our next trip. WOW! It was so exciting to watch the wheels in her mind run and run as she sent me email after email of her progress on planning and making the bags. She even contacted a labeling company to see about labels for the bags and the company decided to donate a label for each bag free of charge! As she worked on the first bag Tamara began thinking about the journey that each bag would eventually take - from her sewing hands in Elgin, IA, to our suitcase, all the way to Ghana and into the hands of the kids of Samuel’s village. Because of that, she started referring to them as ‘journey bags’ and the name stuck! Here are some pictures of the finished bags:

The tag from the labeling company (Mabel’s Labels) says this:

Journey Bags, Stitched in Prayer
Numbers 6:24-26
(The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you; the Lord turn his face toward you and give you peace.)

I love how God tugged on Tamara’s heart as she read the journal entry, and that she went for it and turned her compassion into action! Yeah!!!! God has surely given each of us unique gifts and talents that only we ourselves can use to make a difference! I couldn’t even dream of creating something like this, even if my hot glue gun was up and running. :) Tamara wrote a few posts on her blog throughout the progress of making the bags which I am including below.

http://tam4buit.blogspot.com/2010/03/journey-bags.html

http://tam4buit.blogspot.com/2010/03/more-on-journey-bags.html

http://tam4buit.blogspot.com/2010/03/mabels-labels_11.html

http://tam4buit.blogspot.com/2010/04/journey-bags.html

Thank you Tamara for your handiwork! These bags will be such a HUGE blessing for the children. They are beautiful and perfect!!!!!!!!!!!!!