Women of Grace Outreach Coordinator, Joanne Kane, just couldn’t throw away the names of the Kalispell, Montana women even though she needed to reuse their lanyards for the participants of the upcoming Women Of Grace National Conference in Sacramento, CA September 19-21. They had attended the Women of Grace One-Day Conference August 2 sponsored by St. Matthew’s Catholic Church in Kalispell.
“I just couldn’t throw those names away,” Joanne said. “They represented the beautiful women, our sisters in the Lord, that we met there.” So, heeding an internal nudge, she put the Kalispell names in the lanyards along with the names of the women who would be attending the WOG National Conference.
At the event, Joanne explained her decision to the conference attendees and suggested they pray for the Kalispell woman whose name had been entrusted to her. Thus began “Ribbon of Grace,” a new prayer ministry of Women of Grace which “ties” WOGs together in a special bond of prayer and intercession.
This past weekend, the Ribbon of Grace was wrapped around the women attending the Women of Grace One-Day Conference sponsored by the Diocese of Fort Wayne/South Bend, Office of Spiritual Development and Evangelization. There, WOG attendees received the names of the Sacramento Conference participants, many of whom wrote special prayer requests on the back of their name cards. The idea was met with a standing ovation expressing the women’s enthusiastic response.
While all of the women seemed delighted with the idea, for one conference attendee the Ribbon of Grace was particularly poignant. She had unexpectedly received her daughter’s name who had attended the Sacramento Conference the weekend before. This delightful surprise amazed Joanne Kane who had given no attention to the Sacramento names she was slipping into the lanyards for the Indiana attendees. “This must be of the Holy Spirit,” said Joanne, “I couldn’t have come up with this!”
Participants coming to the Women of Grace One-Day Conference in Clermont on October 25th will receive the names of the ladies who attended the Indiana conference. And thus, the Ribbon of Grace will continue to unite Woggers nationally. In ’09 those ties will become international ones. A Ribbon of Grace tying the women of the world together in prayer and intercession for each other. What a concept!
