Judith & James

Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this:  to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.  

                                                                      James 1:27

When I first learned of Anna Taylor, founder and CEO of Judith & James, I was instantly drawn to her story, as I am drawn to anyone that shares the same heart song; a passion for fashion and a compassion for those in need.  What really drew me in though, was not the connection in our callings, but a rather significant difference. I am a little over a decade older than her and I was absolutely amazed by her complete willingness and courage to say YES.  She provided the time, the drive, and the dedication to see the opportunity and the dream, all the way through to a physical entity and reality.  

In 2010, at the age of 19, she made a choice out of pure obedience to Christ to use what He had given to her to care for widows and orphans. Even at 29, I remember still struggling to make decisions out of pure obedience! But there was no hesitation for her, no second guessing.

When I asked her why she acted upon it as a teenager, instead of planning to do something later after she finished school or started on her career path, she replied,

                "I knew that the time was now and I had an open door when the pastor in the slums offered for me to come and re-start the sewing training program for widows.  When there is an open door, you walk through it." 

Oh, but silly me, how could I have expected any other answer when your parents have been the admirable example of service, care, and love, when they said YES in 2007 and moved their entire family from Little Rock, Arkansas to Nairobi to start Go Near Ministries.  They spent several years living there and continue to return numerous times throughout the year to aid impoverished women and orphans surviving the slums.

 

Anna moved to the states to attend college and in 2010, flew back into familiar Kenya. It was then that she was introduced to Judith, an extremely skilled, but unemployed seamstress living in Nairobi.   Anna began using her knowledge from the fashion world to design pieces for Judith to sew and then brought those finished fabrications back to the U.S. to sell to friends and classmates.  Those designs sold out so quickly that Anna sought out local suppliers and industry experts in Africa and then took an internship in product line design with Amani Ya Juu.

Anna has now showcased her beautiful pieces not only at the Northwest Arkansas Fashion Week, but debuted the Judith & James Spring/Summer 2014 Collection at New York Fashion Week.

There are now ten ladies in the intensive, eighteen month long, James127 Foundation sewing program, located at the Haven building in Nairobi.  Seven women are enrolled in a new jewelry program added just this last May.  Upon graduation, these women are offered positions with either the Judith & James company or with Judith & James' sister partner, Jimani JewelryCollections.

You'll be able to see a sneak peek of their newest constructions and creations in the upcoming Northwest Arkansas Fashion Week show, Walk this Way, to help support the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation.

                "I want courage to be communicated to the wearer.  The women in Kenya are so courageous every day.  The strength and courage of those women is translated through the clothing they hand make." 

Anna,  thank you for saying YES, for being courageous yourself, so that the stories of these inspiring and talented women can be told each time someone pulls a blouse off its hanger or slips a dress over their head.

 

If you would like to add a few of  Judith & James' strikingly beautiful pieces to your wardrobe, they are available for purchase at their website or you can help by sponsoring a student in the James127 training program.  You can also keep up with what's new on their blog or the Judith & James facebook page!

David Fernandez

"No eyes, just white spaces."

David Fernandez got a taste for art when the fury of fumes from the can settled like dew on his lips.  At fifteen, David and his brother, along with some friends, painted the streets of Oaxaca, Mexico.  Although, instead of painting by moonlight in dark clothes and ski caps, his group, Arte, was welcomed in broad daylight.  Those in the neighborhoods clamored for their next mural.  This larger-than-life graffiti literally gave life to an otherwise dying area.  They covered walls of broken down buildings with messages of hope, stories of the streets, but always with the beauty of a hero, a rescuer.  "I have always been very good at depicting loud aggressive facial expressions...Art has always been a window for me."  A freeing release of dreams via canvas, an entire wall, or a song.

David realized he had a knack for art by the time he reached 6th grade.  He tried his hand at a city-wide drawing contest among elementary students.  The task was Oaxaca's native pride and joy, President Benito Juarez.  He won first place and was offered a scholarship to an art school.  His parents weren't keen on the idea and decided it would be best for him to pursue the arts they viewed as beneficial.  They enrolled him in piano, which he tolerated, but yearned to play the guitar.  They gifted him a pair of top-of-the-line skates, in which he quickly sold to buy his first electric guitar and tiny amp to accompany it.  The only thing he lacked was a willing and excellent instructor that didn't charge for his services. 

He found exactly that in his childhood friend who not only knew how to play the guitar excellently, but who also happened to be blind.  He had grown up in the orphanage that his father's church operated and was the first orphan to call it home. David saw music in an entirely new light.  The wind whistled in this new opened window, and blew the sheet music of the piano lessons to the back of his mind.  He learned to play solely by sounds and the variations of the vibration pulsing through his fingertips.  He couldn't get enough, and would practice for hours on end, most days tallying up at least six.

David and his brother started up a metal band that promoted a drug-free, non-violent lifestyle that attracted so many youth to his father's church, they outnumbered the adults by over one hundred.  They began teaming up with other bands, performing at downtown squares and drawing some 2,500 attendees per night.  The government contacted the band with an offer to fund the concerts if they would just keep offering that positive message to the city's youth.  By the third year, bands from the United States and as far as New Zealand were flown in to join the collaborative concerts on the government's dime.  They received an invitation to the U.S. to record their first album.  Everything was in place, planned out, packed, and ready to go, but God had other plans, their visa was denied.  In utter disappointment, he re-lived the same moment when the art school painfully slipped from view. 

David went back to school and worked on finishing up his graphic design degree.  The band never fully recovered from the blow and they all agreed it would be best to hand it off to the next generation of passionate artists that might ignite the flame back into it.  On the other hand, surrendering the band life gave him much more time to pursue the beautiful American girl that came with her dad every summer to help out at the orphanage.  She was eight when she spent her first summer carrying a different mother-less baby on her hip each hour.  It was another eight years before David took notice of her and coincidentally, his volunteering at the orphanage increased considerably.  They married in Mexico in 2007 and had two children of their own, a girl and then a boy and felt God had plans for them back in the United States.  A visiting pastor from the Midwest invited them to stay at a home just across the street from his church.  This time, his visa was approved.  After just four months of calling the U.S. home, David and his wife found out they were expecting their third child.  Halfway into the pregnancy they were told that the baby had severe heart and brain malformations.  His daughter was born at a children's hospital, known for their premiere pediatric heart center, just a few hours away from their home. 

As he sat next to her bedside, barely able to see any exposed skin, every inch covered in tubes and tape, he found himself utterly disappointed with God once again.  Surgery after surgery, missing death by mere  millimeters and milliseconds, he sat and watched, and no prayers escaped his lips.  After two weeks in a lost daze, he found a few art supplies at the hospital.  He began to sketch and in the months that followed, in this white, sterile and sanitized home away from home, God revealed Himself in those renderings.  All the things that had happened to him over the years that seemed like disappointments were actually His Hands sketching the direction and will for his life.  David's apology to His Maker and Keeper became the awakening of his art.

"No more white spaces, the eyes are filled."  

David now plays for The Ancient Plan, follow him and his band on facebook for upcoming concert dates!