One day Chris and Alex were walking along the beach at Puerto Galera on their holiday. They worked as dorm parents for Faith Academy – a school for missionary kids in the Philippines.
Along the sand towards them came a poor woman with two children trailing behind her. She was selling friendship bracelets. She asked the couple if they would buy any. Alex was moved with compassion and said he would buy all she had with her. She was delighted and as they chatted with her, she asked them to come with her back to her home. They agreed and started along the beach, expecting her home to be nearby. Four hours of hill-climbing later, they came to her tiny hut in the jungle hillside behind the beach. She told them about her life. She woke early each day and carried about six of the bracelets with her. She and her children walked four hours down to the beach, and walked all day up and down the sands selling them to tourists. In the evening, they walked four hours home and she made another desperate fist-full of bracelets for tomorrow’s journey.
Alex said to her, this week do not go down to the beach. Stay home and make as many bracelets as you can. I will come back and buy all you have made. When he cam e back next week, she had made hundreds. She was thrilled when he returned and bought them all. She said, “I have many friends – this is all we can do to make some money.” Alex and Chris said, “You tell them too … Don’t go down to the beach. Stay home and make as many as you can. I will buy them all.” And he did.
“Threads of Hope” was born that day, and now about thirty ladies from that poor village all make friendship bracelets. They make hundreds and thousands of them. Chris and Alex bring them back to Manila –to Faith Academy – the school for missionary kids. They sell them to the staff, who carry them home in their luggage as they each go on home assignment to their different home countries. Staff sell them while they are at home and many small shops have taken up the idea and are also selling “Threads of Hope” bracelets in countries all over the world.
In the months since then, it has grown like a wild, wonderful weed. Now Chris and Alex process about a million bracelets every year. Their home brims with the beautiful, hopeful threads. They have raised enough money to build a church in Puerto Galera and pay a pastor and youth worker. In July of 2011, about thirty of those women were baptized in the sea where they once walked along the beaches. They wore white robes and came up out of the sea crying and dancing with delight. Jesus has saved them in every way a person can be saved – from spiritual and physical despair and poverty.
The real kick in this story is about the little kids trailing along behind that poor woman on the beach that day. She had little girls. There are lots of little girls who once went with their poor mothers along that beach. The tourists who visit that area are often men, and they are often travelling with a sexual holiday in mind. Those little girls were ending up snared in abuse and prostitution. That doesn’t happen anymore. The daughters of those women are now living a dream they could not have imagined before “Threads of Hope”… they are going to school. Jesus has saved them and the lives they have yet to live and the daughters they have yet to bear.
Ruth Tuxworth, 2012.
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