Turned Mawmaw’s craft lesson into good deed across the globe
About the same time Sarah Green’s Mawmaw had taught her how to make crosses out of beads, she overheard her mother on the telephone discussing how her missionary cousins wanted to help support a hospital in Mozambique, Africa.
It was “Giving Tuesday” in November, and they were brainstorming ways to pay some of the employees who were still coming to work at the 165-bed Chicuque Rural Hospital even though there wasn’t money to pay them – some partially or completely.
Her mother, Jennifer, said family members David and Elizabeth McCormick from North Louisiana are serving as missionaries through the United Methodist Church at the hospital. David has been the hospital’s administrator and Elizabeth, the pharmacist, for the last four months.
For this 11-year-old Luling girl, the answer to the problem was obvious.
She’d make crosses just the way Mawmaw had taught her and sell them. The goal was to raise $1,000 – equal to one worker’s yearly pay at the hospital.
“I just thought it would be a very cool idea to do, and that it would be nice to be able to help somebody,” Sarah said. “It must be hard for them to keep going to work when they don’t get paid so I really want to make somebody who will get paid and feel good about what they’re doing.”
The Lakewood Elementary student went to work and it immediately became a family affair.
Mawmaw donated supplies. Her mother advertised the crosses on Facebook and they even made a video promoting them now as a fundraiser called “Caring Crosses.”
“Then people started ordering a lot of crosses and so I wrote down all their orders,” Sarah said.
She knew she’d have to make 200 crosses at $5 each.Some people asked for crystal beads and others the round ones, but mostly their biggest choice was color and Sarah was ready.
“I had all the colors of the rainbow,” she mused.
According to her mother, “She made crosses and still had orders. They came in pretty quickly. She started about a month ago and she’s gotten all the orders filled so far.”
At one point, Sarah was $90 shy of meeting her goal, but her Sunday school teacher wrote a check for the difference, said her mother.
But then new orders came and Sarah has exceeded her goal by $200 – and she’s still getting orders although they’ve slowed down.
When that happened, Mawmaw had to grab her checkbook because she had promised to match the goal amount, bringing Sarah’s total raised to $2,200.
In Mozambique, David McCormick said her contributions will literally boost the area economy.
“What she’s doing impacts more people,” McCormick said. “Money spent in the community stays in the community. It goes past the worker, past the family and goes directly in the community.”
Sarah is an economic boost for the area.
Also, whatever money donors provide frees up money for other needs like hiring a plumber for the hospital that was built in 1913, which understandably has continual plumbing problems.
“I’m blown away and humbled by her giving spirit, and the love of Christ she’s showing the world,” David said. “Her actions and those of the people who support her are making an immeasurable amount of difference to the people in this community.”
In Luling, Sarah is just glad she could help. She’s already contemplating her Mardi Gras project, again with crosses and a $1,000 goal.
“It feels very satisfying,” she said of helping people on the other side of the world. “It’s like, ‘Yea, I did it.’”
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