ABOUT ME
One Ordinary Woman
The LORD makes firm the steps of the one who delights in him. -Psalm 37:23
In a dream, I heard the voice of God tell me to make a quilt representing Names of Jesus and to begin a traveling ministry. I had doubts, fears, and reservations about accepting the assignment, but, God showed me He has been preparing me for this role for a very long time.
When I was four years old my family moved from Indiana to Colorado. We moved far away from all my relatives. Soon after moving my Aunt Virgie started sending me recordings of herself reading Bible stories.. My dad would play the reel-to-reel tapes on the green recorder for me to listen to. My aunt’s gift was unknowingly God’s way of getting me to fall in love with him and telling His Story. In return for my Aunt Virgie’s gifts, my Dad sent her tapes of me telling stories. And thus, at the age of four, I was becoming groomed to be a storyteller.
Before I had turned five my family returned to Indiana and moved in with my grandmother. I was her shadow and followed her everywhere. Every week I went with Grandma to her Ladies Aid meetings at the church for a full day of quilting. The ladies would give me a needle to pull up and down through the layers of fabric, and though my stitches didn’t look anything like Grandma’s or those of her friends, despite my lack of skills, they let me take part in the making of a beautiful quilt.
On Sundays, I went to church with my Grandma. I fell in love with the hymns. My favorites became In the Garden, Trust and Obey, and I Love to Tell the Story. These hymns taught me that God walks with me and talks with me; that what He says I will do, where He sends I will go. And, I learned there is no other way to be happy in Jesus but to trust and obey.
Looking at my past I could see that God has been preparing me along to be set apart to carry out the plans He had planned for me; to go and tell the greatest story ever told– His Story in a unique quilt.
JONI WOLF: Happy wife, grateful mom, proud grandmother, enthusiastic storyteller, novice quilter, compulsive researcher, vivid dreamer, incompetent blogger, creative crafter, budding puppet builder, nervous traveler, gingerbread collector, and maker, author, and storyteller of the Immanuel Quilt.
Married to her high school sweetheart, Joni and her husband Tom live on the west side of Indianapolis, Indiana. They have two married sons and six grandchildren.