Providing comfort and prayer

Prayer Shawl Ministry. It sounds so serious.

But walk into a prayer shawl gathering and you'll find piles of beautiful hand-made shawls, bundles of yarn, a strong sense of camaraderie and laughter.

Speak with the participants and you'll get a variety of reasons for why they are there: to make new friends, to ease loneliness, or to make use of their knitting and crocheting skills or learn new ones.

But all are there because they want to help others, to feel as if they have made a difference.

And the word you hear most often? “Fun.”

The ladies — and, yes, almost all of the participants are women — who carry out this ministry are from congregations covering nearly every denomination across the Omaha metropolitan area.

The Prayer Shawl Ministry was started in 1998 by two women at the Hartford (Conn.) Seminary, and it quickly spread across the country. The goal was simple: to create shawls for anyone in need of comfort and prayer.

Betty Olderog, who leads the group at Lutheran Church of the Master in southwest Omaha, said her church has three different groups that meet every week.

On a recent Monday afternoon, 15 chattering women ranging in age from their late 20s to senior citizens were seated in a circle busily knitting or crocheting their latest projects.

Olderog said their church got the idea and a shawl pattern from Christ Community Church and started the ministry in 2006.

“We had no idea what we were getting into,” she said.

Since then, she added, they have given out more than 1,100 shawls to anyone who had a need — from hospitalized church members and the recently bereaved to overworked caregivers and military personnel. A lot of the time, they've gone to perfect strangers.

Each of the Church of the Master shawls is sent with a small metal cross and the prayers of the person who made it. The group has bulging scrapbooks full of thank-you notes from recipients.

“We've gone all over the world with them,” Olderog said.

The knitters start naming places: a ship in the Pacific Ocean, South Korea, Alaska, Texas, Iraq.

Ann Sorensen, a widow, joined the shawl makers for fellowship and support.

“We help each other,” she said. “It's a wonderful group of ladies. We come as we can. We have a lot of fun.”

Even people who have never knitted or purled a stitch can join. “We have many people who are just learning,” Olderog said.

Toni Thompson became a member of the church this year. She joined the Prayer Shawl Ministry as a way to meet other people in the congregation and improve her knitting skills.

“I had just made scarves,” she said. “These are like big scarves!”

Lutheran Church of the Master can also boast of having one member who is male. Sean Tyler, a pastor's son, participates in an evening group.

In Benson, needleworkers meet Wednesday evenings at St. Paul United Methodist Church.

A dozen women recently gathered, laughing and exchanging news while their fingers and needles flew.

Sue Bacon said her church's group has given away nearly 600 shawls in the 3½ years since it was formed.

This group keeps a record of recipients, placing a photo of the shawl and the name of its recipient in one of their many scrapbooks. Before a shawl is given away, the women say a prayer over it, passing it around the circle for a blessing. Then they include a card that they all sign.

“The thank-you notes we get have so many wonderful stories,” said Jo Sahl, who has participated from the start.

The shawls can provide “tangible evidence someone is thinking about them, praying for them,” said Kim Alger. “Being wrapped in a shawl is like being wrapped in God's arms.”

Shawl recipients aren't the only beneficiaries, Alger said.

“It's nice fellowship for us,” she said. “It's therapy.”

Kathy Rice keeps her fellow stitchers in good humor with jokes that she reads aloud every week.

Sometimes they get in trouble for laughing too much, for being too loud, said Sheila Sadofsky.

Sadofsky isn't a Methodist. She is Jewish, but she joined the prayer shawl group when she heard about it from a friend. She thought it sounded like a fun project.

There's that word again: “fun.” Doing a good deed that's fun.

The best thing about the St. Paul Prayer Shawl Ministry, Rice said, is the relationships that have developed.

“We didn't know each other that well when we started,” she said. “Now, we're good friends.”

Contact the writer:

444-1067, carol.bicak@owh.com