MCUSA WOMEN already benefit from sale of cloth!

Christine Nofsinger and Suzanne Lind lugged yards and yards of Congo cloth to Bluffton, OH, little did they know how eager people would be to buy it. With Rose Linds help, they transformed a Bluffton classroom into an array of beauty only matched in cloth selling booths in Congo.



As a workshop for the meeting of Central District Conference in June, 2010, this launched a wider awareness of the Congo Cloth Connection project.

Suzanne and Chris each shared stories from Congo. Chris shared:

My senses were assaulted in Congo by color, smell, and sound! And the cloth! I fell in love immediately!

Chris had already made a quilt for her friends the Linds using the Chinese coin pattern. Congo cloth had been given to her as a thank you for hosting Rose in her home during stretches while both Tim and Suzanne were in Congo with their MCC assignment. But now Chris had the opportunity to choose her own cloth for purchase. Since then she has asked the Linds and every other person she knows traveling to Congo to bring one or two suitcases of fabric home with them. Chris:

At this time we have over 1,000 yards of cloth here in the US. But I think it will go really fast at Pittsburgh.

That is the hope. By obtaining booth space at the MCUSA Convention in Pittsburgh, July 4-9, 2011, Congo Cloth Connection hopes to share with many both a new awareness of the vibrant culture of Congo and a desire to pray for how church to church relationships between Mennonites in the Congo and the US can unfold. When asked about what she hoped, Chris said,

It's not about cheap cloth. "Every stitch a prayer" was my way of learning to pray for Congo while quilting. I don't know other ways to hold concerns, sometimes. We hope that everyone that buys cloth will pray for Congo as they create beautiful things. Who knows where this will lead. And at $10 a yard, we will be able to share our joy with proceeds that go back to Congo.