Quilting bee aids in disaster relief

It only took a couple hours for members of St. Armands Key Lutheran Church to assemble 1,000 personal care packages for Lutheran World Relief, but it’s a year-long effort. 

Of course, they had to raise money and buy supplies. Each care package contains a towel, toothbrush, comb, two bars of soap and a pair of slippers. But they also sent over 200 handmade quilts around the world. 

The group meets at church every Monday for a quilting bee. At the start, they only made about 50 quilts a year. Now, the record to beat is 250 in one year.

“This is a project we’ve been doing here at the church for well over 15 years, probably at least 20 years." Chair of the Community Service Ministry Ann Walborn said. “It started out as a bunch of ladies doing it in their homes.”

The packages don’t ship to their recipients immediately. First, they go to a warehouse in Maryland. Lutheran World Relief provides humanitarian assistance and disaster relief, so the packages eventually end up where the greatest need is. That’s unknown when the tractor trailer pulls away with the boxes. 

But because each box is barcoded, it doesn’t remain a mystery. Walborn said their care packages have gone to Uganda and all over the world. Lutheran World Relief provides a tracking system through their website.  

The Quilt & Kit Ministry is the organization’s longest running program. It started in Europe in 1945 after World War II, and now it distributes an average of 300,000 quilts each year. 

“Even here in the United States when there was a big flood in Minot, North Dakota, quilts went there to that church,” Walborn said. “It made the ladies cry because they opened boxes and some of the quilts that they had sewn were some of the ones they got in return. They lost everything in their church and a lot of stuff in the town.”