A thank-you, and then he’d be on his way.

Humming along with the Christmas music playing over the church’s intercom system, Sarah Smith sewed white yarn through a cut piece of plastic canvas. The snowflakes she made each year with the pieces of canvas and yarn were some of her favorite homemade Christmas decorations.

She glanced around the room at the mix of women, teens, and children busily making ornaments to be sold at Pine Hill’s annual On-the-Square Christmas Festival. Many of the twenty or so volunteers were the same smiling faces who had helped with Sarah’s past projects—people she adored.

With her employment as Pine Hill Church’s administrative assistant and special projects planner, Sarah was always organizing something. Often, she believed their projects helped those participating as much as—and sometimes more than—they helped the recipients of their work. Giving truly was better than receiving, which was why Sarah loved Christmas so much.

She enjoyed everything about Christmas. The decorations, the smells, the food, the kindness, and good cheer that prevailed. The get-togethers with family and friends that made everything sweeter. If it were up to her, she’d arrange for Christmas to come way more often than just once a year.

“I couldn’t do this without you all,” she told the group of women working at her table. The Butterflies, as they referred to themselves, had an assembly line going to make the plastic canvas snowflake ornaments.

Sarah’s projects would be nothing without the Butterflies to see her ideas to fruition. She could always count on them. The four women had been a part of Sarah’s life from the beginning, and she loved them dearly.

“Yeah, yeah.” Maybelle Kirby’s old blue eyes didn’t lift from where she was hot-gluing sparkly white sequins to a finished snowflake. “Use it or lose it, I always say. And these old bones ain’t got much more to lose, so I gotta keep using.”

Maybelle was Sarah’s favorite—possibly because she had been Aunt Jean’s best friend. The two women had bonded over being young military widows, neither of whom had remarried or had children. Although in her early seventies now, and the oldest of the group of volunteers, Maybelle was a firecracker and knew how to do just about anything Sarah took a fancy to learn. As the church’s previous special projects planner, Maybelle had been adopting do-gooders such as Sarah for years and was a fount of knowledge and encouragement. Sometimes Sarah thought Maybelle missed her role as planner. That was why she made sure she kept the woman involved.

“Besides, someone has to keep you in check,” Maybelle muttered, earning a few chuckles from the others at her table. “Don’t know how you think you’re ever going to meet a man if all you do is work, work, work.”

Sometimes, Maybelle’s involvement wasn’t a good thing. Like when it came to Sarah’s love life—or lack thereof. Though to be honest, it wasn’t just Maybelle. All four women thought it their responsibility to marry Sarah off.