THREADS OF HOPE by Chrystal Houston
Alumni of the Year awards exemplify hearts of service
I To read more about Eternal Threads or catch up with Linda on her blog, visit www.eternalthreads.org
s Linda Egle ’70 a “missionary”? She’ll leave you to decide on questions of semantics. She’s too busy helping impoverished women in 12 countries find a sustainable source of income so they can feed, house, and educate their families—and in so doing, save themselves and their children from a possible life of slavery in the sex trade.
“If someone rescued you from a life of horrific slavery and certain death from HIV/ AIDS, what kind of witness would that be?” challenges Egle. She shares Matthew 9:3537. Just as Jesus had compassion on the crowds, “because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd,” Egle’s heart has been touched by the multitudes she has seen struggling to survive in the bleakest circumstances. “The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few,” the passage says. Egle, founder and director of Eternal Threads, is one of those workers. Eternal Threads is a non-profit organization that purchases handicrafts at a fair trade wage from women around the world and sells them in
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Linda Egle with a young artisan from Madagascar
2011 Alumni Awards
the United States. Proceeds go to support programs in developing countries to end sex-trafficking, build schools, and teach women how to sustain themselves through sewing and other crafts. On a given day, you might find Egle hopping a plane and donning a head scarf to meet with her contacts in Afghanistan or traveling in a remote area in Madagascar to meet with local weavers. It’s easy to be overwhelmed by the poverty, she says. To feel helpless and insignificant, thinking about all the work there is to be done. Sometimes it feels like all her work is no more than a drop in a very large ocean. But then she remembers the individual women she has helped, like Rosemary, age 20, in Uganda. She makes baskets for Eternal Threads and uses the income to care for her disabled mother and send