A bracelet

One woven bracelet.  It was amazing how this very simple craft "took over" the youth camp that was recently held in Oaxaca.

One of the members of a mission trip that was helping at the camp had found this craft idea on the Internet and brought a few supplies along in case a few youth at the camp were interested in doing something during their free time.

The bracelet is made with a three inch circle of cardboard and 7 pieces of embroidery thread.  One bracelet takes about 2 hours from start to finish.

The first day of camp, we offered to teach people how to make the bracelets but no one was interested.  The second day of camp, I sat on the steps of the dining hall working on a bracelet that I had just started.  Soon there were youth surrounding me and asking if they could make one.  We ran out of material and offered to buy more when we left the camp for the night.

The next day there was a large group of youth wanting the bracelets and we ran out of material again.  Wherever you looked that afternoon there were small groups of youth gathered to make these bracelets.  We had started something.  It didn't matter what age (13 - 25) or what sex (boys were just as interested as girls).  Everyone wanted to make a bracelet.

However, my most memorable moment came when a young women that I had first met when she was about 2 years old, came up to me as I sat alone on the steps and asked if she could make a bracelet. 

We  began talking as we worked on our bracelets and she asked me what it was really like to be a missionary...was it hard to leave my family, how did I know that God wanted me to be a missionary, why Mexico, etc.  She shared that God has been nudging her to think about being a missionary when she was an adult.

What a privileged moment--sharing around a simple woven bracelet and sharing what God has done in my life and what God is doing in her life.