Inspired by Missions Mosaic

Author: 
Karen McElroy, Women on Missions Director McKelvey Road Baptist Church
Edition: 
August 2010

   February 2010, The Baptist Women’s magazine, Mission Mosaic featured an article on “Sewing Seeds of Kindness”, The Power of a Witnessing Doll.  One of our ladies was inspired and presented the article at our monthly meeting with two completed dolls.  This was the beginning of one of the most inspiring mission projects the ladies at the McKelvey Road Baptist Church, Cincinnati, in the Ohio Valley Baptist Association have undertaken. We set a goal of 100 dolls, which seemed to be a challenging number for our group of 12 -15 ladies.

   Boy dolls are named Timothy and the girls are named Grace. Each doll has a necklace of bright colors that represent the plan of salvation. Missionaries will use the dolls to share God’s love with a black bead representing sin, a red bead representing Christ’s blood, a white bead representing purity, a blue bead representing the resurrection of Jesus, a green bead representing new life and a yellow bead representing heaven. On one side of the doll, the eyes are closed representing a lost person’s spiritual condition and on the other side, the eyes are open representing salvation, “Once I was blind but now I see.”

   Some ladies sewed, others stuffed, some made the necklaces and other still made the cards that explained the meaning of each bead, some who could not sew gave money to buy the fiber fill. One lady, Pat (our master doll maker), made 80 dolls with a team of helpers and some of the men even got involved stuffing. In the end we had 204 dolls to send to missionaries to use in their ministry!

  Ecclesiastes 9:10 says, “Whatever your hands find to do, do it with all your might.” We used our hands to sew the dolls and each stitch was sewn in prayer for the missionary and the person who would ultimately receive the doll. We are partners with the missionaries sewing seeds for Christ!

   Every time one of our missionaries uses one Grace or Timothy to share Christ’s love, we will be there too and share in their ministry no matter where they are, North America or around the world!