Author: Sunflower Design

Dear friends,

As we now write to you again the summer is here and we are enjoying the bright and sunny period.  We look forward to a holiday and to spend time with friends and families.  Some of the team will go to a camp and some will relax and enjoy just being at home.

Remus our colleague is still recovering after the operation and despite this he works two days a week.  We hope he will soon be able to work five days a week as he loves to do.

More and more visitors are coming back after the long break following the pandemic.  We are glad to meet new as well as well-known friends, coming to shop and to spend time with us.

During the spring we had big orders for special aprons for pottery making.  They are made in a water repellent material in different colours and are divided in two after the waist to protect the knees.  All kinds of people who like to make pottery, from the whole of Sweden, ordered from us.

In Oradea, more and more companies are ordering aprons, t-shirts or other personalized products from us.  They recommend our work to each other and this is very encouraging for us.

Right now we have an order for a very well-known kindergarten in Oradea.  We  are also asked to repair different things such as ‘change a zip or mend trousers’, for both children and parents from Caminul Felix and for our customers.

We wish you all a blessed and peaceful summer.  Thank you for your support.

Greetings from the whole team at Sunflower Design.

Dear Friends,                

   The first weeks after Christmas and New Years holiday has passed and we have had an unusual start to the year.  It became a busy time with many orders both in Romania and in Sweden.  For Sweden we had orders for around 90 aprons, specially made for pottery making, and more orders will come.  The aprons are made in a special impregnated fabric and match the purpose well.  In Romania we made many bags and specially designed hats for the veterinary school in Cluj-Napoca.

In October some of our friends from England came back, following the years of the pandemic when it was hard to travel.  They  joined the team for some weeks and were working with us.  Thank you David, Jeanette and Christine! 

 In November and December we had Christmas selling both in Romania and Sweden, and it was a blessed time for us.  Our friends in Norway and England were working hard as well for us at Christmas time. We hope many people were happy to receive Christmas gifts people bought from us.

the team in Sunflower Design we are glad that we can reach out and help other Ministries with some of their needs.  We have shared with you about the ministry in Dumbrava and also in Tinka.  Those places are in our neighbourhood.  They contacted us some weeks ago asking if we could make more bedding for them.  Their ministries are a blessing, helping old, lonely and ill people.  Often in their last days of life.  Due to the situation with their health their beds need to be changed every day, thus they wear out and need replacements.  We can make them, but we need help to pay the cost of the fabric.  We realise we have asked before, and we ask again, if it might be possible to give an extra donation?  The cost for a waterproof mattress cover is 10 euros.  This includes fabric, elastic, bandwidth, and workmanship.  Feel free to contact us if you need more information.

In Romania we had a mild winter, but now in February the cold is intense with minus degrees.  We are thankful that in Sunflower it is warm,  pleasant, and we can work in optimal conditions.  

We are also thankful for receiving nice and useful fabric from Sweden.  We have this contact from friends in  Trollhattan,  Sweden.

The team is doing well, but is missing our colleague, Remus.  He had surgery in December and he needs to recover now.  We are in  touch with him, and he says he misses work, as he is very devoted to his service.  We hope he will be back to work in March.

Thank you all for your support in different ways, and your prayers.

Greetings from the team at Sunflower Design.

Dear friends,

We have been back some weeks, from our summer holidays and are still enjoying the warm and beautifully coloured Autumn. The celebrating of the 30th Anniversary of Caminul Felix just passed and we had the opportunity to meet many friends and sell our products. Sunflower Design was open on the Saturday afternoon for this occasion.

Lately, we have been working in order to sell at a market in the city centre. We are there every Thursday afternoon together with other people, who mostly sell vegetables, fruit and flowers which are in season. It’s a great opportunity to find new customers.

We also have a big order from a new customer, to make dresses for ladies and girls from Maramures, a beautiful area in northern Romania. People there wear traditional colourful dresses of that region, and it’s good business to sell to tourists who visit Maramures as well.

Among all this, we started to buy fabric and make products for Christmas, and now is the time to think about Christmas gifts. We welcome you, to order gifts for family, friends or even your company!

We can look back on a long time that had many challenges, as Covid 19 hit us all. In all that happened. we can still see that with hard work we could manage and keep the work and team going.
In Romania new ways opened up to get more opportunities for selling. In Sweden Catarina was selling and took orders. It is a blessing to see how the leaders from Sunflower have been open to find new ways to reach out to people and it has been successful. We hope and pray it will continue in the same way this fall.

We wish you all a nice Autumn!
Greetings from the whole team at Sunflower Design

Dear friends,
We have had many warm days already and it is just the beginning of the summer. We
will soon start to take our holidays. Some of us will go for a camp, some visit friends
and families or just relax at home. However we spend our holiday we shall have fun,
enjoy our time with friends and recharge our batteries for Autumn.
In April the first international group visited us, since covid started. We spent a good
time with some of the group, who wanted to help us in the work. They also bought
many things from the giftshop to take back home. We really miss those days with
groups coming and we hope more will come in Summer and Autumn.

A group of senior people from Romania visited our town, Oradea, this spring. They
were impressed by our products in the gift shop and they bought many beautiful
aprons as useful souvenirs. We are very happy and thankful that we received new and
nice fabric from some friends in Sweden. It made it possible to keep the prices lower
and at the same time make many more new things.

We continue to expand the team, taking new girls from Caminul Felix in our
workshop. Since May, Iulia Kiss is coming for training. She is 22 years old and she
grew up in the same family as Remus at Caminul Felix. She likes her colleagues and
enjoys the work and being busy. She is a happy girl and we can see her smiling almost
all the time. She has just started to do the first stitches with the sewing machine, but
needs much more practice and help from the team.

Mariana who left Sunflower some years ago, comes as a volunteer for 2 and half
hours every day, too. She loves Sunflower!
A part of the team is currently working for a need in Noble House. Thanks to a
Swedish sponsor who made a donation for Ukrainian refugees, we have been able to
buy fabric for sheets. These will serve to accommodate the refugees in the hotel.

Thank you all for support for our ministry and for the Ukrainian refugees. Together
we can make a difference!!
We wish you a restful and warm summer!
Many greetings from the whole team at Sunflower Design.

Dear friends,

It is time to send the first newsletter for this year. Spring is on the way and the earliest flowers start to bloom. We  are looking forward to  brighter times. We had some cold days and as the electricity has been very expensive we decided to work at home some days, to save some money and electricity. 

The Christmas selling in Sweden went well even if we didn’t sell in so many places as usual. Still the pandemic affected the ability of so many people to gather. In Oradea it was also hard to sell like we used to because of restrictions. We hope the situation soon will be better and it will be easier to reach out with our products.

 

We thank you all who support us in different ways such as selling our products, buying from us and spreading information about our ministry to people around you. It means a lot to us.

 We are right now a smaller group working in the team as some chose to leave for other opportunities. We plan in the future to employ some more in the team, since we work with just a few girls, and of course our boy, in the team. We really appreciate our workers who are consistent and make an effort to work even if their physical and mental health does not allow them to do too much. Despite her pain, Ana makes a considerable effort to move and use her hands as much as she can.  However, she gladly comes and works at her own pace, because she loves Sunflower. 

Despite the pandemic situation we have orders in Oradea. Soon we celebrate Mother’s day and some organisations have ordered many towels from Sunflower to give to ladies.

We hope to have visitors this year. We miss meeting our friends from Sweden, England, Norway and US.

As we all know the situation in Ukraine is terrible. Many people have had to leave everything that they had. The first group of women and children from Ukraine arrived March 2nd to Caminul Felix and they received food and accommodation.  The next day they continued on to different destinations and a new group with 60 children and women arrived the same evening. The youngest was 1 month old. “Sunflower Design”s team is involved in making bedding for all the beds and also making other things such as baby clothes, or whatever they need. 

You are very welcome to support Sunflower Design´s work for our Ukrainian friends. You can support by giving a gift by PAYPAL from our website. To send a gift follow the instruction, as a part is written in swedish: Press buy products, buy now, Beskrivning: write Ukraine, Pris per objekt: the amount in USD you want to give, antal: 1, fortsätt and after login on PAYPAL or pay with credit card. Let us know if you need our help.

For our Swedish friends you can use SWISH: 1232015550 , mark with Ukraine

Thank you for prayers and support!

Many greetings from all of us at Sunflower Design