Tante Tina:  A Heart for the Poor and Needy
by John Dick

For more than twenty years, Tina (Martens) Friesen sews stitch by stitch, one blanket after another for families all over the world suffering war, hunger and poverty.

Tina was born in 1924 in Alexanderfeld, Russia.  When she was six years old, her parents emigrated to Paraguay with their five children (one child had died in Russia.)  After a long passage by ship and then ox cart, the family arrived in Fernheim where they settled.  Here, Tina grew up on the family farm which produced cotton, beans and nuts.  Life was not easy due to the extreme heat and hard work.

In 1969, Tina married Jacob Friesen .  Ten years later, she and her husband immigrated to Canada to join other family members who had moved there previously.
After living for a year in Vancouver, they moved to Abbotsford and attended Clearbrook MB, where Tina joined the ladies’ sewing circle.

In 1986, after her husband retired, Tina devoted her time to sewing blankets for MCC.  Her desire is to help people living under harsh conditions and to do something for God simultaneously.  Each year, for the past twenty years, Tina and the seven women who make up the ‘Maranatha’ ladies group, have sewn 1,500 blankets.  Moreover, Tina sews another 500 blankets and covers each year on her own!

In 1999, Tina was introduced to a young German volunteer working with MCC in Clearbrook, who was picking up some blankets Tina had sewn.  Soon there was an ongoing connection between Tina and the German volunteers in the area.  She invites them to dinner, bakes cakes for them, and fixes their clothes.  The volunteers help with making blankets or do other chores.  This summer, Tina travelled to Germany to visit the volunteers she’d befriended in Canada.

Tina is now 83 years old, but is still highly motivated to keep making blankets and help people in need.  How long will she keep doing this?  “As long as I am in good health!” she says

John (Johann) Dick’s family comes from Kirgizstan  and is now settled in Germany.  John has spent the past 6 months in Canada studying English where he has learned to know and appreciate ‘Tante Tina.’
 

A Quilt is a Blanket with a Heartbeat
by Helen Rose Pauls

When Katie Reimer heard that her old school chum, Agnes Sawatsky, was alive and well and living in the Chilliwack hopyards, she was overjoyed.  Katie had long mourned her childhood friend who she thought had perished in Stalin’s gulag. From her childhood, Katie remembered how Agnes had had the courage to hitch up the horses and wagon and ride down the village street on Sunday afternoons, or how she had walked across the bridge railing when no one was looking. They had shared the same school bench, until Katie’s family had left for a new life in Canada and Agnes’ family had stayed behind, eventually being sent to Siberia.

Now, twenty-four years later, Agnes, her husband and two children had arrived in Canada and were just across the Vedder River.  Katie could not wait to see her. She arranged for her husband to pick up Agnes’ family in the Model T and bring them back to Yarrow for Sunday lunch while she busily prepared a huge meal for these survivors of famine, prison, war, flight, and refugee camps.

A joyous reunion, a sumptuous meal and a too-short visit led to many more Sunday noon feasts together as Katie’s family shared her bountiful table with guests who finally could eat until they were full. Katie’s husband took Agnes along to Vancouver to the Old Church thrift store to purchase clothes to remake for the children when he went to the big city to get steel for his blacksmithing shop. And Katie gave Agnes a quilt, artfully made with strips of useable fabric from the less-worn parts of old woolen suit pants and skirts, to ease the chill in the uninsulated hop yard shack; a gift from those who had very little, to those who had even less.