At last to the banner-making workshop!

 We started today making the banners depicting Jesus and the Samaritan woman at the well. Rev. Patsy asked them what the banner was about and the recognized the story.  Hurrah!! I succeeded in getting the images to be meaningful.

 Of course, they were able to confirm that the best time of day to get water from the well was the cool of the day, not in the mid-day sun.  We talked about how this woman was an outsider – getting water in the heat of the day, not with the other women at dawn and dusk, when it was cooler; how Jews and Samaritans didn’t talk to each other; and how men didn’t talk to a woman by herself.  This woman has the longest conversation with Jesus of any individual in any of the Gospels, and she talks with Him and questions Him.  She manages to lead her whole town to an experience of Jesus, which results in their own decision to follow him.  As they make this banner, I encouraged them to remember that the woman took what she heard from Jesus and told her whole village about him, and invited them to meet Him, and that they could do so too in their villages .

It seems highly popular, and is going fast.  We had 50 women and 8 children and about three babies, still breast-feeding, and being held while the women sewed.  They are so talented, and learned each step so quickly.  It was a bit slow in the afternoon as we had only two irons and seven banners to fuse together.  It was glad that I had put the fusible web on the back of all the fabrics before we came, so that they could cut out the sections and then fuse them to the backing fabric.  They are getting on well with the stitching, so that is very encouraging for getting them completed. 

With the donations from members of St James the Less we bought a sewing machine and iron for this workshop (also a hard drive to back up the Diocesan computers and a CD player which we used in the children’s workshop). Thank you so much to those who donated the funds for these. 

Jeannette (Todd and Patsy’s housekeeper) and I gave lessons to the young girls and some of the women on using the sewing machine, and the girls were very enthusiastic to learn.  Ann helped the girls sew a pin cushion from some of the scraps.  

The women, children (and one brave man) had brought their own vary (rice) and the Diocese provided loka (the meat/vegetable accompaniment to the rice).  Just look at how much rice they eat, and there is about double the loka on these dishes than they would usually have!