Here is the first cross stitch that I designed myself. It was very hard to do it since I had to draw it on the graph. When Cathy taught me how to drive when she would want me to go faster she would say.."GOOSE IT!", wanting me to step on the accelerator. She would get me laughing every time because I had never heard of that saying before! The skunk I added in the picture was because she likes skunks...actually not the smell. LOL! That Christmas as a gag gift I also gave her a stuffed toy skunk that looked real! She ended up liking it so much she and I would go around and take the toy skunk and scare people with it. Tee hee. She named the skunk "Pe Pe." as in "Pe Pe le Pu" on the Bugs Bunny cartoons. So I decided to add the skunk in the picture for fun. Actually I used a picture of Flower from the Disney movie "Bambi" to help me draw it.

This is another cross stitch I designed myself for Cathy. This was before she left the DUF Children's Home to start at Our Father's Family. I had been making this cross stitch before I found out she was no longer working at DUF, but since I started the picture, even though she was working at a different Children's Home, I decided to go ahead and finish it. I don't know if you can tell but at the bottom is a picture of clouds and a sun with the Bible verse Matthew 19:14--"Let the little children come to Me and do not hinder them, for the Kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these."--The bottom picture is of Cathy's bedroom in India where she hang the cross stitch up.

This cross stitch is sad for me to look at now since my friendship with Cathy had to be torn apart. This picture I did use a book but I changed the color and hairstyles to make the two girls look like Cathy and me! The idea behind this picture was, when Cathy was visiting during one of her furloughs, she and I found a stray gray and white cat in my backyard. Well my Mom didn't want us to go near it, but we did anyway and we ended up holding it and feeding it with Mom watching and shaking her head. Eventually Mom let us take care of it daily until we had to give the cat away because we had two cats already and our two cats didn't like this gray and white one. Cathy ended up naming the cat "Freddy" before we gave it away. Why??? Because Cathy said, "I don't know...that name was just the first name that popped up in my head." Heh heh. The lady we gave Freddy to takes in cats and she has probably hundreds of them in her house. She decided to continue calling him Freddy. I miss that kitty. But this cross stitch is a bittersweet memory of Cathy and me when we found him in my backyard.

This was the first cross stitches that was this big in size. You can see how big this one is since you can see me holding it up. This is the first cross stitch I made for everyone in the Children's Home of Our Father's Family. To make this one, I had to trace a map of India but it was so big I ended up taping the map to our picture window and tracing it that way, then I put the tracing on the graph. What took the longest was the filling in of the blue part of the map itself. This cross stitch took me a little over a year to make! You can't see it too well but on the map, I put a little tiny picture of a cross that marked the place in India where the Children's Home is located. Beside the cross I stitched in the name "Kullu" which is the name of the city they lived in. Out from the cross I have the letters shooting out that says the name of the Children's Home which is "Our Father's Family." On the bottom of the cross stitch which I really don't think you can see is the scripture verse in Proverbs that says "Train a child in the way he should go; and when he is old, he will not turn from it." It was kind of funny because it was until AFTER I decided on that scripture verse, Cathy told me that that verse was the verse that they base the reason of starting the Children's Home on. So I thought that was neat how that turned out. In the bottom picture you can see Ringi, the lady who worked at the Children's Home with Cathy standing beside it after it arrived at the Children's Home in India.

This is another large cross stitch I designed myself for the Our Father's Family Children's Home. This one also took me about a year and I also made it as a surprise for Cathy and the Children's Home. In the middle is the poem I wrote for the Children's Home. I will have the poem up in my poem section of this Angelfire website soon so you can read it there. This poem is also the poem that the children made into a song and sang for me. They recorded it onto a cassette tape and sent it to me. If I can figure out how, I hope to have audio of the song of this poem on my site later. The little children have such precious voices and to have them surprise me by making my poem into a song was more than a blessing! The children sing it in English but with accents since their main language is the Indian language of Hindi, which is just too cute! The children also clapped their hands and danced during the song which you can hear on the tape! Stay tuned as I hope to get it up so you can hear it, but I hope to have the poem up sooner in my poems section. The next picture is the real picture of the Children's Home that I went by that I put in the cross stitch in the lower corner. The next picture is Ringi standing beside it after I sent it to them. This cross stitch is probably my favorite of them all of my India cross stitches.

This is a cross stitch I made for the little girl I sponsored from the Home..Tashi. You can see more pictures of Tashi in the OUR FATHER'S FAMILY PICTURES on my site. This one I used a book of Precious Moments cross stitch designes. I changed the hair and skin color to look like Tashi and added the name "Phoebe's bed" for their puppy Phoebe who lives with them. I think this kind of looks like Tashi, don't you think?

This is one I designed myself but had the help of a Precious Moments Design book. I took several designs in the book and put them all together into one cross stitch, and then added the cross and clouds. I made this for Cathy's "Yahweh's Cottage", a cottage which she and some of the other children stayed in which was right near the Children's Home.

These next three cross stitches are of smaller ones I made for each child in the Children's Home. I also used a book to help me with this one except like the one above of Tashi, I changed the color of the hair and skin to make it like each Indian child. I added each child's name on it and then had them put into little frames. The top picture is without frames and the two bottom pictures are after they had been put into frames. Each cross stitch since they were small didn't take me too long to do. About a week and a half for each one, sometimes less if I spent a lot of time working on them.

These next two pictures are the last cross stitches I made before Cathy and I had to end our friendship. Sorry about them being so dark. I dropped the camera one day in our garage and it tore it up so it did not take good pictures. I had already mailed the cross stitches to the Children's Home before we got a new camera so I wasn't able to get a good picture of them. Heh heh. But you can at least see them a little bit. :0P These I also took a Precious Moments book and made a large banner of each child's name! I also made them little bookmarks which you can barely see in the bottom picture. I cross stitched animals in the bookmarks and Precious Moments characters in the banner ones. (Yes I've always been a Precious Moments collector. I think they are so cute!) If you go to OFF PICS PAGE 13 and if you look closely you might be able to see some of the cross stitches as the children are opening them during the party.

That's all the cross stitches I have of this page. I know if my friendship with Cathy was still alive, I would be making more for the children and her. I hope that Cathy and the children still are able to look at the cross stitches I made them over the years and that they know that I made it for them because I love them. I miss them so much!