On Saturday, November 8, 2008, in Brooklyn Park (Minneapolis), Minnesota, we celebrated together what God has blessed us with and the challenge of taking care of our neighbor - be it in Minneapolis, in Minnesota, or all the way to Bangladesh! It is exciting to see the results of one email requesting people to make and donate a quilt block with a heart on it. Within weeks of that request, heart blocks appeared in my mail box. The heart blocks came from around the United States, Canada and the to our surprise from Germany, Cambodia, Indonesia, India, and from Bolivia, high in the Andes Mountains.
With that momentum, we started a new project with "Houses". In November of 2006, Colleen from the Children's Activities in Minneapolis asked if the children colored House Blocks, could a quilt be made and could it be a traveling quilt? Yes, we could make the blocks into a quilt but I couldn't promise a traveling quilt. In the summer of 2007, the colorful house blocks were delivered and the process continued of finding fabric for the sashings and boards to make the quilt.
Then, the day after Thanksgiving in 2007, the call came from MCC asking if we could use House Blocks from our collection to assist MCC Relief Sales around the United States and one for Canada to bring attention to the cyclone devastation that had just occurred in Bangladesh (which is now a year ago). I was just speechless, the children's House Block Quilt was ready for quilting and the dream of a "Children's Traveling House Block Quilt" was going to be a reality!
The House Block Quilt traveled to Relief Sales across the United States in 2008 receiving donations for the Bangladesh Housing project and it sold in Minneapolis raising in excess of $71,000. That is over 175 houses at $400 in Bangladesh!
The Minneapolis Relief Sale had children in a tent on the stage represented houses in Bangladesh and as $400 was raised, a child was to cross the stage to a House. The auctioneers requested donations and the children had to run across the stage because the $400 donations were so plentiful. It had been the goal to request $400, then $300, and if we had 20 people donating $20, we would have a house. Having the Traveling House Block Quilt hang in front of them, they generously shared God's Blessings to them.
Earlier on Saturday, two young girls stopped by the quilt and suddenly found their names on the quilt blocks. Looking at their parents, they both said "I made that block here last year!" The realization that they had made a difference in this world, was clear on their faces. They had not realized that a quilt had been made, that it had traveled the United States and was providing so many people with a home in Bangladesh. One of those girls left the auction a very happy girl as her father purchased the quilt. She will have a "Show and Tell" she will never forget.
