Sometime...

You might be asked to put a bridal bouquet together.

I agreed to do it because I have always liked putting flowers together - and how hard could it possibly be?

A large mound of assorted flowers reposed on my bed that evening.


But some of the flowers were dirty and needed to be washed. Then I thought it would be nice to bleach some of them.


Then they had to dry.


The bride wanted white and gold flowers. I had the white flowers but needed to paint some other flowers gold.


Painting them by hand wasn't hard at all, just time consuming. The flowers had to be pulled apart, each layer painted, and after they were dried, put back together.


They painted easily enough, but the color was wrong - more of an off-brown than true gold. A spray bottle of gold paint was gotten hold of and it did the trick, covering both flowers and fingers until I had the sense to put a glove on.


Then, I suggest you get a creative aunt to come and help you, since you may have now realized that you don't know how in the world you're going to do this. Pack up all of your stuff - not leaving anything behind. This will prevent you from having to send family members back for some items.

Make a mess, of course, as you try to create a lovely bouquet for a bride halfway around the world.


Find paintbrushes, hot glue gold beads onto flowers, eat some carrots for lunch, stick pearls onto floral stems and rip fake foliage from flowers while your extremely creative aunt works on the bouquet. She will have many good ideas - like creating a long bouquet to be carried over the arm. This will make it easier to be packed in a suitcase.


After a while you might have come up with a pretty bouquet, like we did... although, your bouquet might not be going to a bride in Sierra Leone.

Ours is.


In Sierra Leone things are not readily available and the bride, Tina, asked my grandparents, who travel on mission trips regularly, if they could bring some flowers for her wedding. White and gold flowers.

Isn't it interesting the way things work sometimes? How incredible to be a part of preparing for a wedding in Africa - never having met the couple!

Yet, I can do things like this for unknown persons because of the love of Jesus that connects the body of Christ, no matter how many miles separate them.