Talent, fabric, machines, willing servants combine for mission trip

The day a truck backed up to 22nd Street Baptist Church in Tucson with a donation of 49 rolls of drapery fabric, Connie Miracle had no idea what to do with it.

Although Miracle was part of a Women on Mission group at the church and had done sewing projects before, 49 rolls of fabric was a lot.

That same day, they learned that the church would receive a separate donation of three sewing machines from the family of someone from the church who had recently died.

“And I thought, ‘OK, God, you’re trying to tell me something,’” Miracle said.

Less than one year later, Miracle joined a small team from 22nd Street Baptist Church in Durban, South Africa, teaching refugees to sew handbags made from the same donated fabric that showed up at her Tucson church.

Marcia Liverman helps in a sewing class at a refugee welcome center in Durban, South Africa.

For about six days in July 2025, a team of four from 22nd Street served at a refugee welcome center supported by the International Mission Board and Send Relief in Durban. During their trip, the team led two sewing classes, worked with teenagers, taught about 40 pastors and leaders, encouraged the local missionaries and identified future partnership opportunities.

Earlier in 2024, Ashley Evans, senior pastor of 22nd Street Baptist Church, had joined several other Arizona Mission Network pastors on a vision trip to learn about mission opportunities in Sub-Saharan Africa. They visited several countries, and Evans walked away convinced his church would return to Mozambique for mission work.

“But it just never worked out …” he said. “Durban was not where I would have chosen. God sent us where He wanted, not where I wanted; what He had in mind, not what I had in mind.”

Shortly after the fabric and sewing machine donations in 2024, Miracle started teaching a sewing class at the church on Wednesday nights. They started making handbags for a future mission team to take to a yet-to-be-determined destination in Africa.

“As we were praying about where to go, Connie felt a burden to do something with the sewing ministry in Africa,” Evans said. He contacted partners with Send Relief to inquire about the existence of a sewing ministry in Sub-Saharan Africa. Durban’s welcome center was a fit, with its sewing program that taught a skill refugees could use to earn an income.

With a destination selected and a mission team soon solidified, Miracle began teaching the other team members, Marcia Liverman and Bobby Spillman, to make the handbags so that they could help teach the sewing class in Durban.

Bobby Spillman fixes a sewing machine at a refugee welcome center in Durban, South Africa.

“When we knew we were going to do this, I would go in and use a different machine each night to learn how it operated and how to fix it,” Spillman said.
After a mission trip to Mexico more than 30 years ago, this would be Spillman’s first return to the mission field.

“I really enjoyed that and wanted to do it again, but an opportunity never came up, and then life happened …” he said, referring to marriage, children and career. “But I retired two years ago. When this trip came up, in the back of my mind was, ‘What’s your excuse now?’”

At 57, Evans said he was the youngest member of their team of four.

“When it comes to missions in Sub-Saharan Africa, there is something for everybody,” Evans said. “Every age group, every calling, every skill level. You can take families with kids, teenagers, college students, all the way up to senior adults.”

Johanna Willett, a freelance writer living in Tucson, is a member of Mountain View Baptist Church, Tucson.