Mission accomplished — and more

For the third year, a group of women from our church gathered on five Saturday mornings and created dresses for girls living in poverty and at risk around the world. The project is part of the international Dress a Girl Around the World mission.

The women, led by Judith Hill and Lili Acheson, set out with the goal “Just One More,” meaning they wanted to complete 167 dresses — one more than last year’s total.

With fewer women working on the project this year, the final 2018 total was 193 — truly amazing!

“This was a group that got together to sew dresses, but the fellowship we had together was wonderful,” Judith Hill said. “The dresses kept coming in from people who had worked at home. It was amazing. It was like the loaves and fishes.”

On Saturday, Feb. 24, Jackie Dewey (above left), regional ambassador for Dress a Girl Around the World, came to our church and picked up the dresses after the final sewing session. Before she left, Pastor Casey Collins blessed the dresses, the women who created them, and the girls who will wear them.

Dress a Girl Around the World has groups and organizations around the world creating dresses, including every U.S. state, parts of Europe, Uganda, South Africa, the Philippines, Japan, Hong Kong and Australia. Since the program began in 2009, one million dresses have been delivered to 81 countries.

The Southern Maine group, of which our church is a part, has created 4,500 dresses over the past two years for girls in Senegal, Malawi, Uganda, Haiti, India, Nicaragua, and Guatemala.

The group of women who created dresses this year from our church included Judith and Lili, Linda Webster, Jean Meyer, Beverly Merrill, Kathie Hackett, Barbara Knowles, Genesta Berry, and Linda Wakefield (who sent six dresses from Florida). Betty Brown from the Peoples United Methodist Church in South Portland also was part of this year’s group.