Twice a year, spring and fall, Lutheran World Relief quilts and kits get collected

Twice a year, spring and fall, church quilting groups from all over the region donate hundreds of handmade quilts to Lutheran World Relief

By Pastor Devlyn Brooks

FARGO, N.D. -- Two times per year, just like clockwork, the Midwest Motors Express terminal in Fargo rolls an empty semi-trailer outside its main fence for church quilters from all over the region to transport in their handmade quilts they’ve been sewing together throughout the year.

The quilt collection effort traces back decades to when the original owners who founded the trucking company felt it was their obligation to give back.

“Midwest Motor Express has hosted this pickup in Fargo for a very long time,” said Matt Tunneberg, who has been the operations manager at the Lutheran World Relief warehouse located in Minneapolis for more than two decades, the ultimate destination for the collected quilts. “The original owners were farmers who moved into trucking as well, and they did this as part of their commitment to faith. When they sold their company they asked the new owners to honor the commitment and also to extend the steep discount for transporting the quilts.”

On a visit to the truck during the third week in May this year, one could find the semi-trailer’s doors open with a metal staircase at the back of the trailer. Several packed boxes of quilts, all in uniform size, were stacked at the trailer’s back end. Peering inside the trailer, you already could see about a third of it full of quilt-packed boxes from the floor to ceiling.

Tunneberg said that this same scene plays out each May and in either late October or early November, twice a year, every year. Representatives from area churches, generally older women who volunteer as part of a local quilting group, drive their quilts to the MME terminal and drop them off for shipping.

The warehouse director says the two dropoff periods each year are symbolic. Both were times of the year when farmers had the time and the equipment available to assist in the transportation of hundreds, if not thousands, of quilts. In the spring, before planting began and the roads were good enough for transportation, and in the fall, after the harvest was complete.

“So Lutheran World Relief has just stuck with those times of the year that the drives happen,” Tunneberg said.

Lutheran World Relief is an international relief organization founded by Lutherans in the United States at the end of World War II, according to LWR’s website. “... (G)rounded in Lutheran theology and building on decades of experience, Lutheran World Relief tackles global poverty by helping people adapt to the challenges that threaten their livelihoods and well-being,” states the LWR site.

According to the site’s history, LWR started distributing quilts in 1945 to families in postwar Europe which was devastated by the war. “Within a decade, the ministry was reaching around the globe to villages far removed from the world’s attention,” reads the website. “Today, an average of 300,000 quilts are lovingly given worldwide each year.”

Debi Byars of Faith Lutheran Church in Wolverton, Minn., is one of those women who participates in a quilting group, FLC’s group gathering together from October until the spring. She started volunteering about 15 years ago, when the ladies leading the group added some quilting times on Sundays so that working women could participate. Now that she is retired, Byars says she has more time to participate.

Nowadays, however, Faith Lutheran’s quilting group, which consists of a revolving group of about 10 ladies who are all retired, generally meets for the first time each year in October, and then decides on a couple of days per week as they go along the rest of the year. It’s loosely organized on schedules and other commitments.

Byars said the quilting group serves as a special historical link to the church’s leading matriarchs who started the quilting decades ago, and the weekly quilting sessions also serve a vital social component for the women involved.

“The women that founded this group were such sweet women,” she said. “So willing to teach all of us new volunteers.”

“This really is a mission born of love,” Byars said. “When we’re done with each quilt, we turn it over and make sure we didn’t miss a stitch. But if we do, we fix it right then. It’s not finished until every stitch, and every corner is right.”

Byars said the group now produces about 30 quilts per year, with some going to Lutheran World Relief, and others being donated to local agencies in need as well. But their ministry is in jeopardy because there aren’t any new volunteers joining the ministry.

“Once we start going away, this ministry will likely fade unless there are some younger people willing to pick it up,” Byars says wistfully.

Mary Hanson of the quilting group at First Lutheran Church of Audubon, Minn., describes a similar quilting ministry.

About 5 to 10 quilters meet from 9 a.m. to noon every Friday at the church year round. “You know, with a coffee break, sometimes shorter, sometimes longer, in between,” she quips.

Hanson, who has been participating for about 11 years since she retired, was inspired by her mother-in-law, who was part of the quilting group in the 1990s and early 2000s.

First Lutheran’s ministry also gives a few quilts a year to LWR as well as other local agencies. But the women participating also gain from the social activity and by “working together for something bigger outside of our church.”

But their group isn’t attracting many young volunteers either.

“Unfortunately, the average quilter is getting older,” Tunneberg said of the common lack of new participation that church quilting groups are facing. “For every 2 quilters we lose we’re only replacing with one new quilter. “If those 10 to 20 quilts we receive from a church become six to 14 you can see the problem. So the question becomes: How do we engage the younger generations to make these wonderful, beautiful quilts?”

LWR’s relief efforts are not solely concentrated on shipping quilts handmade by church ladies in basements all across the country. Tunneberg said the LWR material aid program is likely best known for its worldwide quilt distribution, but its only one-fourth of its total aid effort.

They actually ask for four kinds of donations, including school kits, baby care kits, and personal care kits, in addition to quilts.

“About 50 percent of our material collected is quilts, 50 percent of the material is a mix of the other three items,” Tunneberg said.

Tunneberg’s warehouse in South St. Paul is one of two LWR warehouses in the country; the other is in New Windsor, Maryland. Both locations were chosen decades ago because of their access to railway lines across the country. And all the donations made to LWR collected south and west of Wisconsin come through the Tunneberg’s South St. Paul warehouse. The rest are shipped to the Maryland warehouse.

“We ship 900,000 to a million pounds of material out of his warehouse annually,” he said. “We receive the donations, mostly quilts, repack them and ship them out.”

“The need on the other end is far greater than we could ever fill,” Tunneberg said about whatever churches donate to LWR. “I appreciate any and all donations. Please keep them coming!”