Women Attend WM Workshops, Create Handmade Gifts for Christmas
Skopje, Macedonia | SEEUC WM | February 6, 2023 | Marija Trajkovska
Police officers and other emergency workers on-duty in nine stations throughout Skopje received food gift baskets and mini-concerts as tokens of appreciation for their faithful service.
Women's Ministries in the Skopje Seventh-day Adventist Church in Northern Macedonia were busy just before the Christmas holidays in 2022. Mira Pastonjicki, Macedonian Mission WM director, organized three creative workshops in December for making cardboard baskets and decorating teacups with the Bible verses and hope messages. The items women created were given later to community employees and nursing home residents during the Christmas season.
Women participated in a WM creative workshop in December to decorate teacups with Bible verses and messages of hope.
Decorated teacups were given as Christmas gifts to residents of a local nursing home.
These baskets are handmade of cardboard by women attending a WM creative workshop in December.
Mira Pastonjicki (far left), WM director in the Macedonian Mission and her team, filled the handmade baskets with food to give to on-duty city officers for Christmas appreciation gifts.
By delivering the food baskets these women continued a decades-long tradition of visiting those on-duty at community stations and presenting a mini-concert of Christmas carols.
Following their decades-long tradition of visiting on-duty service officers in Skopje during the Christmas season, women from the area churches and Pastonjicki visited nine community services, (such as police station, emergency ambulance ward, fire brigade, etc.), on January 1, 2023, presenting them with the handmade cardboard baskets packed with fresh fruit and homemade cakes to express gratitude for their dedicated service to the community. The women also prepared a brief musical program of Christmas songs, for wishing them joy and blessings on the coming Christmas Day, which, in orthodox Macedonia, is January 7.
This video recorded the group singing "Joy to the World" after delivering food baskets to a Skopje police station.
Women visited the local nursing home, January 7 (Christmas Day), sharing the season's good cheer with the elderly residents who were presented with their short concert of Christmas carols and the decorated teacups made during the December creative workshops.
See what else is happening with creative workshop retreats in Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina in South-East European Union Conference (SEEUC)
Written by Marija Trajkovska, WM director for South-East European Union Conference of Trans-European Division (TED)
Published in Mosaic newsletter, 2023 Q1
