lavender just keeps on giving

You have probably heard me talk of the Lavender Project the women in my church have been involved in. Through it we harvested and sold lavender products to raise money for plastic surgeries to reconstruct the mutilated faces of women in Uganda.

I was excited to find out, today, that our leader and the idea person behind this project, Cherril Holcombe was one of four women honoured by the Langley Rotary Club at a luncheon just in advance of International Women's Day tomorrow (March 8th). Read about it here: "Local women are honoured for good works."

How fabulous is it that the story I wrote for our denominational magazine, testimony magazine, also published this month. "The Lavender Project- a fragrant offering of hope" begins:

"Cherril Holcombe listened with horror as Marilyn Skinner, guest speaker at the May 2010 Life Women Conference in Surrey, B.C., described the facial mutilation many north Ugandan girls suffer when they try to escape from sex slavery at the hands of soldiers from the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA). Marilyn first became aware of the problem when she saw a photo of Nancy, a woman with no nose, no lips, and no ears. Then Marilyn met Nancy and heard her story. Nancy was only seven years old when she was abducted by the LRA. She escaped but was abducted a second time. After her recapture, another child soldier was forced to do the facial mutilations with a razor blade.


Marilyn went on to describe how it was virtually impossible for these women to integrate back into normal society. Their repulsive appearance and the way food dripped out of their mouths when they ate meant that nobody wanted to be around them. When they started businesses, no one wanted to do business with them. They were rejected by everyone, even shunned by their own families and left isolated with no hope." 

Read entire... 

Related: "Lavender sales rebuilds slaves' faces lives.