Here at Stull United Methodist Church, the teddy bears have no faces.

The church members wish they could have eyes and a nose. But when these bears get delivered to Lawrence Memorial Hospital next week, the fuzzy toys will wind up in the hands of children – children who need emergency help, not a little googly eye to possibly choke on.

“It’s neat to know that you’re doing something that’s going to make someone else happy,” said Sandra Mitchell, the wife of new church pastor Andrew Mitchell.

Andrew Mitchell gave his first Sunday sermon July 2. Since then, Sandra has spent time getting acquainted with a church that, several times a year, breaks out the sewing machines to make gifts for those who may need a lift.

The church’s sewing group, called Nurture, Outreach and Witness, has in the last year sewn quilts and hats to give away at area hospitals. The gifts typically go to specific patients – for example, last November’s hat donations went to patients in the Oncology unit at LMH.

Saturday, church members sewed 40 bears eventually headed to the emergency room, ready to go home with kids who come in with illnesses and injuries.

Rita Lesser, Lecompton, has a laugh while putting the final touches on a homemade teddy bear. Lesser and members of the Stull United Methodist Church, 251 North 1600 Road, put together more than 40 We

“But first, we’ll send them out for the Sunday service,” church member Rita Lesser said, sitting at the “finishing touches” table on the bear assembly line in the church’s basement.

Lesser explained how the operation worked: There were cutters, who carved out the bears’ shapes from donated fake fur; shakers, who rattled the fuzz out of the fur; pinners; sewers; snippers; and turners, who flipped the bears right-side-out after all of the stitches were in place.

“Everybody just gets in their own little worlds,” Lesser said of the volunteer church members Saturday.

In her first foray into the church’s sewing circle, Mitchell had only one request: that she didn’t wind up tending a sewing machine.

“I just knew that I couldn’t sew,” she said. “So I wound up here.”

Here means sitting at a table, wielding scissors, flipping the bears fuzzy-side-out. But Mitchell said that she’s just happy helping out here – and happy that she and her husband entered a church that is so active, so giving.

“We walked into a place that has a lot of organizations like this,” she said. “It makes it a family community.”