Guess The Christmas Carol

Women use their monthly meeting to make new clothes for young Kenyan girls

Eleven-year-old Iris Elmore carefully folds over a piece of blue fabric, securing it with brightly-tipped pins. The fold will become the hem of a dress for a little girl about her age, far away in eastern Kenya.

As Iris sews, she considers the Kenyan girls who will one day wear the 11 colorful sundresses she has made so far. “I hope they really like them,” Iris says. “I hope that they’ll just wear them to the last piece.”

Iris is one of several Lubbock seamstresses using their skills to sew a little good around the world.

She meets monthly with eight women in Ransom Canyon to sew dresses for girls in Malindi, a town in eastern Kenya. The women have been meeting for eight years, largely gathering to sew quilts.

But plans changed when one member, Carla Temple, learned of a friend sending dresses to girls in Uganda. Temple began to think of the people she meet during four three-week missionary trips to Malindi. The area was poor, and most children wore second-hand clothes — sometimes several sizes too large. Though her last trip was in 2005, Carol thought of her Kenyan friends often.

“I would go tomorrow, but my body — I guess with age my body has slowed down,” says Temple, who is 70.

She told the sewing group, which then decided just before last Christmas to dedicate their monthly meetings to sewing dresses. Temple spoke with Kenyan pastors in Malindi to learn the amount and ages of the girls in the village.

The sewing group set a goal of making 200 dresses and began working in Temple’s home in Ransom Canyon. With about 225 dresses under their belts, they have surpassed their goal.

Some of the women think of their own childhoods as they sew.

“We were very poor when I was growing up, so I can empathize with the little girls,” says Ethel Averitt, one of the seamstresses. “It would just be thrilling to have something new and having something pretty.”

Iris’ great-grandmother, Shirley Graham, remembers wearing dresses made of flour sacks as a child.

When Graham told Iris of the group’s plan to sew dresses for girls in need, Iris told her, “Well, I have a lot of pretty dresses, so I’ll help you make some.”

In Lubbock, Ingrid Simmons also was inspired to contribute to an effort to clothe global children. Through a friend’s Facebook page, Simmons learned of Hope 4 Women International's Dress a Girl Around the World campaign, which invites people to convert gently used pillowcases and T-shirts into dresses for girls in need.

COMMUNITY BUILDER: Guess the Christmas Carol - Rethinking Youth ...

Here's a quick and easy game to test your teens' knowledge of well-known Christmas carols.  The list below, which has been anonymously circulating the internet, describes famous Christmas carols using over-inflated language.  See how many your group can guess! Give candy canes to the winning team...and to everyone else, too! Tis the season to be jolly!