The following is excerpted from the Church News. To read the full article, CLICK HERE.
As around 400 women from different faiths stood and sang “How Great Thou Art,” with American Sign Language interpreters also signing the words to the music, Danette Garrard felt chills.
“The Spirit was very much present. We cannot even express how it filled our hearts to see everyone in their various and beautiful ways to worship the Savior,” said Garrard.
The moment came at the end of the Vernal Christian Women’s Conference in March that Garrard had been a part of planning for several weeks.
“It has bonded our community together,” she said. “It’s almost like people lowered their guard and realized we can all be a community. That’s what the theme was, it was community and unity in Christ. That’s what all of us really wanted.”
Garrard helps coordinate JustServe projects for 10 Latter-day Saint stakes in the Uintah Basin area of Utah. During the women’s conference, she spoke about how JustServe.org connects community organizations with volunteers. And JustServe and St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Vernal had a project for the women attending the conference — bringing fabric and 10-inch quilt blocks to make quilts for charitable groups in their area.
The response to the project was immediate and successful. With those quilts, “the women of the community are wrapping their arms around people in their darkest moments of need. They are wrapping their arms around them with a quilt they made with their own hands,” said Garrard.
To read the full article, CLICK HERE.
