Carol Walker can’t stop the tears when she tells her own rag doll story. It was Christmas Eve and Walker’s father, a coal miner in Walker County, was out of work. Times were tough, she said, but her mother was determined to make something special for her children. She worked all night and Walker’s gift that Christmas morning was a simple hand-sewn rag doll.
Some 40 years later, Walker was at a women’s meeting at her home church, First Baptist, Gulf Shores, in Baldwin Baptist Association, when someone passed around a sheet of paper with a rag doll pattern printed on it. When she learned that the dolls would be used to minister to children of coal miners in West Virginia, she felt the Holy Spirit speak to her and knew this was a mission meant for her.
“Those coal miners up there are pretty poor, too,” Walker said. “The rag doll part really touched my heart. Mine had a message that my mom loved me, and this one has a message that Jesus loves us. That’s what made me want to go.”
The Baldwin Association missions project, WMU (Woman’s Missionary Union) Gets All Dolled Up, and the WMU-led missions trip to West Virginia April 16–22 came about as a result of a conversation between missions volunteers Susan Bartholomew and Bill Barker at the Winter Olympics in Vancouver, British Columbia.
Bartholomew, Baldwin Association WMU director and a member of Pleasant View Baptist Church, Foley, met Barker, national director of Appalachian Regional Ministry (ARM), and spoke with him about needs in his area, specifically in West Virginia.
From its base in Hurricane, W.Va., ARM works in partnership with 13 Baptist state conventions, the North American Mission Board and WMU. In central Appalachia, which includes West Virginia, poverty is rampant. It has been described as the “poverty pocket of America,” in part because 37 of the poorest 100 counties in the country are located in this region. Churches and ministry centers regularly deal with poverty-related issues, including abuse, illiteracy, substandard housing and basic needs like food, medical care and clothing. As a result, missions teams are encouraged to prepare to meet both the physical and spiritual needs of the communities they will serve.
Bartholomew issued her challenge to a group of about 200 women gathered at the WMU Annual Celebration at First Baptist Church, Fairhope, on April 22, 2010.
“That night, I told them that I would like to take 500 salvation dolls to the children of West Virginia in 2011 and that I wanted the WMU leadership team to host a family missions trip to take them,” she said.
Bartholomew continued to share her vision with churches around Baldwin County, and her vision became theirs as well. Churches prayed for the people of West Virginia, and members young and old began to sew simple 12-inch rag dolls of cloth and yarn. Each doll has two painted faces. On one face, the eyes are closed. On the other, the eyes are open.
“The two faces of the dolls signify that we are blind without Christ, but with Him, we can see,” Bartholomew said.
Each doll also wears a salvation necklace, made from beads with colors representing the salvation story. A card attached to the doll tells what the colors mean and provides a Scripture reference for each color. Bartholomew said her hope is that children will come to know Christ as they hear the plan of salvation and wear their doll’s necklace as a bracelet to share with others as well.
Baldwin County Baptists met the goal of 500 — and then some. On April 10, they held a doll dedication and prayer service at First Baptist Church, Robertsdale. More than 1,200 dolls were dedicated.
“It was simply amazing,” Bartholomew said.
In addition to the dolls, the missions team is carrying 265 backpacks filled with school supplies, as well as hygiene kits to give to the children, and 150 crocheted hats for both children and adults.
“You name it, I have it,” Bartholomew said, noting that even during difficult economic times for the Gulf Coast, “people all over the county have given and given.”
The 34-member missions team represents 15 Baldwin Association churches. Team members range in age from 5 to 78. In addition to Bible study and ministry to women and children and light construction work in the towns of War and Coalwood, they are going to the Greenbrier Birthing Center in Hillsboro, a federal facility for pregnant women who are incarcerated.
According to Bartholomew, the women enter Greenbrier in their third trimester and can stay there with their babies for 15 months. During that time, the center provides food but no other necessities. The women depend on their families and churches to provide diapers, wipes, clothing and other necessary items. Currently the center houses 10 boys and six girls, and the team is taking blankets, booties and hats for each child, all handmade by Baldwin County Baptists.
The team plans to do more than just deliver gifts, however.
“We are taking lotion and we are going to wash the women’s hands to show them that we love them, just as Mary washed the feet of Jesus,” Bartholomew said.
That kind of one-on-one time to talk with each woman and pray for her will be a powerful experience for everyone involved, she said.
Kay Stewart, WMU leader at New Life Baptist Church, Bay Minette, and a member of the Baldwin Association WMU leadership team, is taking two of her grandsons on the trip. It’s the first missions trip for both Adam, 13, and Mason, 15, Boutwell.
Like Walker, Stewart felt a special calling to this ministry. Three years ago, she lost her husband. After 43 years of marriage, she felt she had “no purpose or direction.” When another widow told her that she needed to find a new “normal,” she sought God’s direction for her life.
“The first thing I knew, this missions trip came into my life, an opportunity to share with others, particularly the women, what it really means to have a new life in Christ,” said Stewart, who will teach women’s Bible study while the team is in War.
The team’s final stop is Beckley. There it gets a small glimpse into a coal miner’s life as it tours a coal mine and feels what it’s like to be 1,500 feet inside a mountain.
On April 28, team members will share their experiences through stories and pictures at the WMU Annual Celebration.
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