Paper Hearts

 

   As part of an effort to get the know the women in Relief Society better, each of us in leadership were given a list of names of women to reach out to. It didn't have to be anything big, it could be a text, a letter, or maybe bringing a treat of some kind.

   I struggled with what to do. I wanted to do something meaningful, not too expensive and not too time consuming. I asked Wendy, the other counselor, what she had planned to do. She was going to make a treat and deliver it. I'm a pretty good baker, but I decided against that mainly because of the time it would take to deliver the treats.

   An idea came to me while I was talking to Wendy. It seemed small and silly, but I told her anyway. She liked the idea so much so that she said she would not mind getting one. What I thought of doing was making an origami heart and writing a small note on it to give to the women on my list. With Wendy's encouragement I decided to do it.

   Origami is something that fascinates me. The kind of intricate shapes that can be made simply by folding paper is amazing. When I was teaching children in Sunday School, as a lesson I showed them how to make a origami puppy face. I think I had more fun doing it than the children did. I already had instructions for how to fold a simple paper heart. I thought I was going to need to buy some origami paper until I found some notepaper in my computer desk. The was a design on the edges of the paper that would show well depending on how I folded the heart. All I would need to do was cut the paper into a square.

   Last night I spend some time carefully cutting nine pieces of paper into squares. Then I folded each one into a heart making sure my creases and folds were as even as I could get them. They turned out pretty well. When I was done I had nine neatly folded hearts. They looked good. 

   Now came the hard part. My original intent was to write a short not on each one. The challenge was I didn't want to write the same thing and I didn't know what I would write. Then I had another idea. I could look for inspirational quotes or verses of Scripture to put on the hearts. Once I decided to do that, things got a lot easier. I looked at the name of each woman on my list and thought about them and what I knew about them. Some of them were people I knew and I found quotes that I felt were good. A few of them made me think of a specific topic and I found quotes that I liked. It was fun looking online at various sites for quotes. Once I was done I looked at them again. I liked what I saw.

   I'm working a lot of Sundays this month, so I won't be able to deliver them myself. I'll have to have C do it. I also think that next time I'm going to see if I can make origami stars.