Dresses made from....Pillowcases?

I first heard about pillow case dresses from one of my readers. I went to the blog called Little Dresses for Africa. I loved the concept, but hadn't done anything about it. 

Many times in Africa, little girls are treated like second class citizens. Having a way to show them God's love is wonderful!

Then a missionary in Lusaka told me that she had been sent a large box of dresses but she didn't know where to distribute them. 

I decided to pass them out to the daughters of our staff members. The perfect time was when we had one of our volunteer teams out here.

One Saturday morning we gathered all the little girls together in our courtyard. I told them how much Jesus loved them and that he wanted them to know how special they were. 

We then called the girls up one by one and fitted them with a dress. After finding a dress that best fit them, we held up a full length mirror so they could see themselves. 

One little girl, who had probably never had the chance to see herself in a mirror, actually gasped and covered her mouth in shock. I cried at how such a simple thing could give so much pleasure.

After fitting all of them with dresses (or for the taller ones--tops), the U.S team members pulled out bags of hair bands and bows and covered the girls' hair with bling. They looked so pretty!

The dresses in the picture above were all sewn by a couple different women. Each dress had a pocket sewn into it and the pocket held a picture with a note from the seamstress. It was so special.

Check out the little girl with the long-sleeved pink shirt. She is the daughter of our laundry lady. Just like her mom, she is extremely shy. The entire time we were together, I could not get her to crack a smile. She almost looked like she was in pain.

Finally, I told her I was bound and determined to find her smile. I told her I bet it was hiding in her belly. I crept closer and closer and eventually tickled the smile right out of her. 

This grin made my day. 

I'm hoping to gather 200 dresses by next summer so we can do a huge program of passing out dresses in a village near us so we can let a whole bunch of little girls know how much God loves them. I can't wait to see this happen!