News

Dear friends,

The summer is over for this year. In Romania we had a very hot and dry summer, not even a drop of rain in many weeks with many days over 40 degrees. As usual Sunflower Design was open the whole summer and we split the holidays over the summer. We always enjoy the time to meet friends and family, and take time to relax. 

Our team is the same as last year; Mari, Estera, Delia, Ana, Andrea, Julia, Mariana and Remus. Some work full time, some part time. Lisa and Catarina are woking in Sweden to sell our products, give support to the team and visiting the team several times a year to give support in different ways. Together we are a well working team which compliment each other very well.

This summer we were visited by many guests, from America, Germany, England and Romania. Most of them got involved as volunteers in Caminul Felix and Sunflower Design.  On the first week of July a team from US came to help build a house, but in Oradea  it was around 40 degrees Celsius, so ladies came to work in our workshop. They took the challenge seriously, it was a  great physical and emotional support. 

In September we continued with different orders; making hats for the veterinary University in Cluj, often we personalise  t-shirts for Theranova, t-shirts for schools or uniforms for different companies. This autumn we made many curtains for new local house and of course a lot a clothes to repair or fix a new zip

Now we start to fill up our gift shop, we sold well in the summer and we also are preparing for sales. In October we will have sales in center of the city of Oradea, it celebrates  “  Autumn of Oradea”, like every year. He hope to get a good result because our products are completely different  from what you find there. 

We also start to make some new products and prepare for different sales at Christmas time. We are also expecting more groups to visit us during the Autumn. 

Thank you for all your support for bedding and curtains for the children in Caminul Felix and for the homeless in Dumbrava. It is a blessing for all.  If you want to support the project; we make bedding, sheets and curtains and give away to children at Caminul Felix or to the homeless in Dumbrava, you are very welcome to contact us. For those projects we need to buy fabric and raw materials, so any support is more than welcome.

You are invited to come with orders for family, friends or companies. 

Thank you to all who are thinking or are involved in our project, we are partners in God’s Ministry.

Thank you all for support and prayers for our team. 

Greetings from the whole team Sunflower 

Dear Friends,

We want our letter to find you well and healthy. The summer is here and we think all enjoy the sun and the warmer weather. In Caminul Felix is quiet, beautiful weather, green fields and a little smell from the farm.

In Sunflower, we are doing well. We combined work with orders and making new products. Some in the team is working despite of poor health conditions, and they work 4 hours per day.

We are very happy and grateful for this spring. We have many visitors, as in the years before the pandemic time. Visitors from Sweden, the UK,  the States,  France, Germany and Switzerland. Some are well known friends, some has never been here before.  It is always a pleasure to welcome and meet new as well as well known friends and customers. 

We enjoyed in particular way with a class of students from England. They spent some hours in our workshop and we worked together. We taught them to make things for them selves or their families. Some students made aprons, bags, wood tools, make-up bags, painted mugs and jewels.

We had a good sale and orders in March when we celebrated the International women day, or Mother’s day, as we say here. We also had orders of pillows and stuff for the garden.

In Sweden, Lisa and Catarina have some sells with good result. Lisa in Smålandsstenar and Catarina in Mölndal. In Mölndal we sold even tomatoes and cucumbers plants and other plats, for the benefit of Sunflower Design. 

Thank you all who donated money for us to make beddings, sheets and curtains for the family at Caminul Felix and for the homeless in Dumbrava. It became a blessing for many. For our team it gave us work and for the children at Caminul Felix and the homeless in Dumbrava a pleasure to sleep in a bed with new beedings and sheets. The project will continue if anybody want to continue to support

We are planning now for holiday time and we look forward for resting and spending time with family and friends.

We wish you all a nice and peaceful summer!

Greetings from the whole team at Sunflower Design

Greetings from the whole team at Sunflower Design

Dear Friends, 

It is a new year and time for some news. We send greetings from a cold Romania, but soon spring will be here. We hope you had beautiful holidays, as we enjoyed some days off and magic holidays. 

Before the holidays in December, we had busy days in Atelier and other selling days. We were surprised by the sales and results of this season. Now we are back in Sunflower and happy for new challenges and projects. 

In Sweden we had good results of selling as well.  Catarina and Lisa had selling in Molndal, Trollhattan and Bankeryd. Thank you to all of you who came to buy or donated money for our ministry. It means a lot.  Like normal in the last few years we also had success with the tree branch gnomes made in Sweden by Adela. This year she made around 30 pieces that we sold in Molndal and Trollhattan. 

Our friends in Norway and England also helped us to sell in the autumn and Christmas and we are happy that our products are sold in different countries. 

The houses in Caminul Felix are being renovated and of course at the same time need to change the inside as well. We have begun to make curtains and bedding for one house at Caminul Felix 2 and the remaining houses will follow.  We also make some pyjamas for new children at Caminul Felix. They are so proud of them as we now have new, funny and nice fabric. 

The old people’s home, for homeless people, in Dumbrava, need sheets made from waterproof material and bedding as well. The ministry is growing as there are many people who don’t have anywhere to live, often old and ill.  It’s a blessing to be a part of this ministry, making their last days in life as good as possible. 

If you want to help fulfil a need, and get involved in one of these projects you are welcome to join us with your support. Don’t hesitate to contact us if you want more information. The idea is to get financial support for the fabric and our work expenses as we donate the products to the project. The result is happy kids or elders, in new pyjamas, nice rooms with new curtains and/or bedding. 

Thank you for your support in different ways. 

Blessings from 

The whole team at Sunflower Design

Dear friends, 

In Oradea it is still sunny and warm and we enjoy the last days, before the dark and cold winter will come. 

After holiday time we have had many orders and have so far been busy. We are pleased to receive  orders as well as being encouraged by people who find our shop. In the last weeks to mention a few things, we made cushions for children to sit on in school, 40 shoulder bags for some children in Sunday school and hats for students at the Vet University in Cluj.  

Recently our friends David and Jeanette Nightingale visited us, spending time and working with us for just over a week. They also continue to sell our products in England on different occasions, which is a blessing for us. 

We are thankful for friends also in Norway and Sweden who sell, buy and take orders of our products.  

We have now started to prepare for different sales before Christmas, both in Sweden and in Oradea. New products are always welcome and make nice Christmas gifts to buy. Now we are able to buy beautiful material in shops in Romania. 

We are preparing winter pickles such as hot peppers, cucumbers, different jams, honey, and walnuts. These are required for Christmas sales. 

On October 14th we have been invited to sell our products at the autumn fair, organized in the city center.  

We continue to have more orders for the special aprons for pottery making, which we started to make at the end of last year and have now made over 100 pcs.  

Last week we were visited by a group of young people from Romania, who came to work as volunteers at the homes for young families from Caminul Felix.  

Thank you for your support. We wish you a nice Autumn! 

Greetings from the whole team at 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

Dear friends,

Autumn is here, after a hot and dry summer in Romania. Holiday time is over for almost all of us, but some kept it for later. We all had a good time, spending with friends, siblings and the family.

Now we start to make plans about selling for Christmas. Our work tables are full with fabric and patterns for aprons, tablecloths, bags, fleece, baby clothes and more. Where and how we can sell depends on the pandemic. In Sweden there will be a Christmas selling November 20th in Korskyrkan in Mölndal. In Romania we don’t know yet. In this autumn we had only two days of selling in Oradea and we really missed it, but in our workshop every day someone came to buy or brought an order or things which need to be repaired.

Don’t hesitate to contact us for any kind of order. We have a stock in Mölndal in Sweden and it’s possible for items to be picked up or to be sent from there. It will also be possible to book small group sales there. If you have any special request for Christmas gifts we ask you to let us know as soon as possible as it takes time to organise the shipping.

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We are thankful for all gifts and orders we received during the summer and autumn, so far. One box is ready to be sent to Norway, with products ready to be sold there by Ruthmor Sanne, a good friend of Sunflower Design. Another order is to make embroidery on 100 caps for Julle Rommedahl, elcykelexperten in Habo, Sweden and in England David and Jeanette start to sell for us again. Thank you also to all who gave support for our different project that we mentioned about in the last newsletter and for the summer gift. Families in Caminul Felix and families who need support in Mölndal, Sweden have received bedding. Your support makes a difference! 

 

Our desire is to keep you informed with our activity in Sunflower.  We want to ask if anyone wants to receive the newsletter by e-mail instead of  post. This is more safe, more economic, and faster. If you choose this way to be informed please let us know and send your e-mail address to our colleague, Estera. Her e-mail address is : estera.tirtea@yahoo.com 

We wish you all a nice Autumn.

Many greetings from the whole team at Sunflower Design