wfn.org | United Methodist youth make teddy bears for kids in trouble

["NewsDesk" <NewsDesk@UMCOM.ORG>]

March 25, 2004	News media contact: Tim Tanton7(615)742-54707Nashville, Tenn.
7 E-mail: newsdesk@umcom.org 7 ALL-YE{131}

NOTE: A UMTV report and photographs are available with this story at
http://umns.umc.org.

A UMNS Feature
By Amy Green*

Vickie McDonald knew it was a good idea as soon as she heard it. 
 
The wife of a pastor and firefighter in Lawrence County, Tenn., McDonald had
been touched by the way a child had clung to a teddy bear given to her by
emergency workers after a fire destroyed the child's home. So when she heard
a proposal that young people make bears for kids in trouble at an annual
youth conference, she was thrilled.  
 
"I knew of at least one child (for whom) it had really made a difference in
her life,'' she says. 
 
Assembling the bears became perhaps the biggest activity at the conference.
Some 300 youth gathered in Nashville in February to stuff, stitch and sketch
faces on about 400 bears that were later given to police departments, fire
departments and other emergency workers across Tennessee. 
 
The conference annually draws middle-school and high-school kids from across
the state for a weekend of worship, fellowship and mission work. But this
activity reached far beyond the event. Even before the conference began,
United Methodists were rummaging through old fabric scraps and stitching them
together to donate.
 
McDonald, the workshop director at the Warmth In Winter conference, never
expected so many bears.
 
"There is no way to describe what it's like when you've got 400 bears done,
knowing where they're going," she says. "It was a really, really great
feeling."
 
The idea sprang from a conference planning meeting last summer. Organizers
were looking for mission work they could do for their state. 
 
"Policemen often deal with children who don't have their adult guardians with
them," says Pam Wells, youth director at First United Methodist Church in
Savannah, Tenn., who organized the activity at the conference. The bears
"help the child feel comforted, and they're also a bridge for the policeman
to talk to that child," she says.
 
Organizers began by inviting United Methodists across the state to dig
through old fabric scraps for anything that could be stitched together as a
bear. These United Methodists stitched the scraps together, turned them
inside out and threaded hundreds of needles for youth at the conference to
use. All supplies were donated.
 
At the conference, youth stuffed the bears, stitched them closed and sketched
faces on them with laundry markers. The youth finished with boxes stuffed
with bears - some striped, others with polka dots and others with fur.
 
"It was really amazingly fun to watch," Wells says. "Those who knew how to
sew helped those who didn't know how to sew. ... And (the youth) got an
opportunity to think about the kids they're helping. Though they'll never see
those kids, all kids know what a comfort a teddy bear is at a time of
stress.'' 
 
For McDonald, watching the bears pile up was a special thrill. The
grandmother of that child who had lost her home in a fire told McDonald's
husband, pastor of Shoates Creek United Methodist Church and director of fire
and security in Lawrenceburg, that the child had hung tight to that bear for
weeks.
 
Police in Smyrna, Tenn., got at least 30 bears from the conference. Spokesman
Sgt. Ken Hampton says the department long has used stuffed animals to comfort
young victims of crime. The toys show the children, for example, that the
officers who arrested their family members are trying to help, he says.
Officers will keep the bears handy in their patrol cars.
 
"Officers who don't deal with a lot of kids that often, it makes dealing with
them a lot easier," he says. "It lets them realize that we're really not bad
people."
 
Tyler Power, 12, of Lawrenceburg, Tenn., wonders who will get the bear he
made during the conference. He says he had fun stitching up his bear while
chatting with friends. 
 
"I kind of wanted to know where it would go, who it would go to and what they
would do with it, and how they would feel," says Power, who attends the same
church as McDonald. "It would just be cool because if I knew who they were, I
wanted to see the look on their face when they got their teddy bear." 
# # #
*Green is a freelance journalist based in Nashville, Tenn.  

 
 

*************************************
United Methodist News Service
Photos and stories also available at:
http://umns.umc.org