THE TEDDY BEAR MINISTRY

We are 97-year-old twins and we can’t get out much anymore. But we can still do things to bring a smile to people. That’s why we started our ministry 12 years ago.

We buy teddy bears and crochet handmade clothes for them and give these bears to children. My sister buys the bears and all the material we need. I crochet the outfits for the bears. It takes pretty much all day to make an outfit for one bear, but I don’t mind. I’ve got the time. We just want to bring some happiness to kids, some who don’t have too much.

This all started when one of our church members had a child that was sick when we were 85 years old. We bought a bear, crocheted an outfit and we, as a congregation, prayed over that bear. Other children in our church saw it and wanted a bear themselves, so a tradition was started. We not only give them to kids going through a difficult time but also children as they graduate kindergarten. We’ll make them for newborn babies in our church—the outfit will be pink for a girl, blue for a boy. We even give them to high school seniors when they go off to college—the bears will be dressed in the colors of their high school, complete with a mortar board and tassel!

There is a lot of prayer that goes into a bear before it leaves us. Since we know who will be receiving the bear, my sister and I are able to pray over the bear as I’m crocheting the outfit. Then, the church puts the bears on the altar and we pray over them. We want the families receiving them to know how much they are loved by our church family.

We really don’t know exactly how many bears we’ve made—we stopped counting about seven years ago when we hit 400. We are not able to do many things at our age. But we certainly find a lot of joy in doing this, and showing people that you can still pray and help others in some small way no matter how old you are.