500 Blankets
At Thanksgiving, our Relief Society President read the church-wide letter about humanitarian service. For no particular reason, she felt inspired to ask our ward ladies to make receiving blankets--500 of them by Christmas. We all thought, "Don't you mean 50?" We all got busy, (such a quiet time of year) and actually accomplished it. We then had no where to send them! At about that time, a mother in our ward took her son to the Humanitarian Aid Building in Provo looking for an Eagle project.
They didn't find anything, but she asked the manager about a huge map on the wall with flags posted on it. He answered that these were projects hadn't been taken care of yet, but not to worry; answers to the most incredible problems came from the most unexpected places. He then pointed to Ecuador and said, "This little town's hospitals and orphanages are wrapping their babies in newspaper because there aren't any blankets". The mom said she felt like a jolt of electricity shot through her, and she said, "Isn't that interesting? Our ward is just finishing up 500 receiving blankets and we don't have a place to send them!" He just responded, "See!"
I love that our leaders can be inspired. I love being asked to participate in something that requires me to sacrifice a little. I love knowing there are warm babies in Ecuador. I especially love the International State of the church that makes service like this possible.
Kathleen K. Pribyl