Foster Parents Opened Creative Shop to Bring Crafts to Broken Women
August 25, 2017
Lincoln Mercy residents creating their treasure boxes
As a part of its multi-dimensional approach designed to address the whole person – spirit, soul, and body – Mercy Multiplied invited guests to teach the Mercy residents at its four U.S. homes.
The Inspire Shop, a small creative shop, was birthed with a mission to support women struggling to leave addictions and abuse. Volunteers from the The Inspire Shop visit the Lincoln Mercy home with a purpose to pour into Mercy residents and share the love of Jesus through “craft nights.”
The most recent craft night opened in prayer, followed by a discussion on the importance of knowing your identity in Christ. The residents were instructed to create “treasure chests” by painting small wooden boxes. Inside the boxes, the residents placed paper notes about who they are in Christ. As the craft night closed, the residents formed a circle and read who they are in Christ according to scriptures from the Bible.
We caught up to Tiffany Garza, owner of The Inspire Shop, and asked her about her passion to help the Mercy residents express themselves through crafts. Read our recent Q&A with Tiffany below:
Tiffany and Ricardo Garza
What’s your heart behind wanting to work with struggling women?
My husband and I were foster parents and adopted our two youngest children through foster care. We saw and heard first-hand about generations of broken women. The children who entered the system usually came from families of women who experienced trauma at a young age and never experienced healing from all the pain, and in turn, brought pain and trauma to their children. It was heart breaking to see the cycle.
It was during a long family road trip that this idea that God had been stirring about healing and working with women came to my head. God said instead of making the crafts in the church, that we needed to bring them out to the community and be the church, which birthed The Inspire Shop, the funding for the gatherings to bring Jesus and crafts to women.
What’s your favorite part about your job?
I love everything regarding creating and Jesus, so this is really a dream only God could weave together. Being able to see women engage in crafts and hopefully hearing something that God speaks directly to them through the message we bring is a tremendous blessing to me.
Why did you choose to bless Mercy by serving in the home?
I had been praying about which local homes we would be connecting with and what it would look like for months. My husband is an advocate for The Forgotten Initiative, a nonprofit bringing awareness to orphan care by connecting churches and agencies, and one night he came home from an event with a copy of Mercy Moves Mountains by Nancy Alcorn. I had been searching Google and my library for this exact sort of book just a few weeks earlier to get insight from the women’s perspective and their healing process through it, and this book was exactly it. His booth had been next to a representative from Mercy Multiplied, and she gave him a copy. Through this we developed a relationship with Mercy Multiplied.
What’s your favorite part about serving at Mercy?
It is so inspiring to me to watch the girls go through the process of God’s healing and redemption. It is an honor to meet with them and glean some of the work that God is doing in and through them. The program and team serving at Mercy is simply incredible, and I am thankful to get to be a little part of what God is doing there.
Mercy is thankful for Tiffany and The Inspire Shop’s willingness to share their gifts and passions with our Mercy residents. Additionally, The Inspire Shop would like to offer 25% off their creative shop with coupon code: MERCY.
If you have a skill or talent you would like to share with our residents, please contact us for more information at [email protected]! Learn more about volunteer opportunities by visiting our Volunteer page.