The Holt Family introduces DfG to Washington County!

 I had a remarkable experience yesterday in St. George, Utah.  On Friday, my dear friends, Melissa Clark and Julie Treadwell and I traveled south to help kick off Days for Girls in southern Utah.  Last Labor Day weekend, I was there for a Holt Family Reunion and met many relations for the very first time.  I was invited to speak at that reunion after several family members found me because of the Holt family histories posted on this blog.  Along with those posts, they found Days for Girls posts with stories and photos.  Before the reunion, Barbara Prestwich contacted me, asking if I would spend an evening telling them more about Days for Girls.

We had our first St. George DfG meeting on August 31st.  Several family members and friends gathered and we talked about what we are doing and why.  I promised to return after the first of the year to help host a big event there for anyone interested from the local churches, quilt groups and other organizations.  Yesterday we held that big event.

I never get tired of talking about Days for Girls and how it changes lives.  We filled a gym with interested women (and a few men) and taught them about DfG, how to make kits, and how to start hosting events in their various communities.  It was exciting and so fun!  As I met and visited with these good women, I met many more of my Holt family members–a few dozen of them.  Amazing, I thought, that here were so many of my 3rd cousins, all descendants of James Holt, who was born in Halifax, North Carolina in 1804.

I wondered if James and his children (our ancestors) were looking down on us, his descendants, proud to see so many family members drawn to this excellent work, spending time and energy figuring out how to bless the lives of others.  I felt I was a part of two large groups of goodness–a family group and a Days for Girls group, that intersected here in this place, on this day.  It made me doubly happy and proud to be associated with such wonderful people.

Barbara Prestwich, my 3rd Cousin and friend.

I love my life.  I love my family.  I love my ancestors.  I love my work.  I love Days for Girls.  I love my associates and friends.  I love meeting so many excellent women and men who are sincerely interested in making this world a better place.

I also love cutting flannel into strips and squares and octagons and hotspots and I love tracing PUL and shield pieces by the thousands and I love showing others how to make kits and I love showing photos of girls receiving the kits we make.  I love filling my car to the roof with parts and pieces and fabric and mats and cutters and perfumed soaps and garbage bags filled with washcloths and panties.  I love every minute of what I do and the dear friends who do it with me.  If you haven’t gotten involved yet, you are really missing out.

Tomorrow I will spend the day at a school with troubled teens and at-risk youth, assembling kits.  My car has been unloaded and repacked, filled again to the brim with all the parts and pieces of kits that have been made by 100s of women all over this state.  Oh, my, I’m so excited I may not sleep much.  I seldom do anymore.  Too much excitement in my heart and mind.  Melissa Clark (we are Lewis & Clark) will represent us at BYU for a huge Day of Service there, with 100s of BYU and UVU students who will learn about what we are doing.  And when our activities are over, we’ll meet and share stories and laugh and count kits and laugh some more as we consider our good fortune and the kindness of so many.

How could this Martin Luther King weekend get any better!