Mama's Love Photography is so excited to announce the newest member of our team:  Sarah Damron of Lubbock, TX!  Sarah has an amazing eye and a huge heart for capturing your joy, for telling your story, and loving you well while serving as your photographer of choice.  Sarah is now accepting appointments in the Lubbock area and has an upcoming Easter mini that you won't want to miss!  Welcome Sarah with me as she gives us a glimpse of her first MLP session with an amazing mama-daughter duo.  - Candace 

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I recently had the opportunity to photograph some of my dear friends, Mandi and Avery Schilling. A Mama/Daughter duo, they live life with big smiles. But taking their pictures meant more than just capturing images of their beautiful toothy grins or this short season between girlhood and womanhood for Avery. When we take your picture we are not just preserving joy, we are setting out to tell a story. This story is one of my favorites.

In 2016 Mama Mandi took an opportunity to go to Rwanda. Part of this trip included a brief introduction to a ministry and business called DuHope. The mission team was invited to attend a sort of market of wares of many individuals, including DuHope, centered around a meal and an evening of great conversation.

DuHope is a ministry reaching out to women selling their bodies on the street, asking them if they want a different way. DuHope offers women a new life, a new way of work by making beautiful handmade jewelry. These women have sold themselves for mere pocket change just to put the day’s food on the table. The goal isn’t just a new job, it’s for these women and their families to know the person and love of Jesus Christ through this ministry.

Having seen these various vendors and the vision of what these African-based ministries are trying to achieve, Mandi wrestled with her experience upon her return home. She knew and feared at the same time, I will never be the same, but I’m afraid I actually will. She told her family and close friends about her trip and her questions and asked, Lord, what do you want me to do with this? How can we do something here where we are?  

A year later, driving in the car, her daughter Avery says out of the blue, “Mama, I think me and you should open a boutique and we should sell things like you what you saw in Rwanda.” This may have been a girl’s daydream, but Mandi heard a loud and loving yes from the Lord. Avery spoke into being a heart’s cry of her Mama.

Shortly after this, they began their web-based business, Three14 Market. Colossians 3:14 says "And above all, clothe yourselves in love, which binds us all together in perfect harmony."

It's not just DuHope that they partner with. Purpose Jewelry is made specifically by survivors of human trafficking. Eleventh Candle Co. has (the BEST smelling) candles and wax melts hand-poured by survivors of AMERICAN human trafficking. Let that sink in. These women of Three14 Market are very intentional about the eternal purpose of all of these partners. They want to magnify Christ. Here. There. Everywhere where the world is seeking to win above the power of Jesus.

Please visit Three14Market.com to purchase beautiful handmade jewelry, candles, and gifts. Buy items you would already buy anyway, as gifts or for your own closet or home. It has the power to change lives. More power than we know, because God is using it to bring these women and their children to himself for eternity.

So out of an honest mama’s heart, wrestling with eternal purpose, came a business, but more than that, a beautiful picture of what it means to be a mama: how we model for our children, how we are image-bearers of God to our babies, how we don’t shrug off a whisper from the Holy Spirit, how when he says “Go,” we get brave.

This past summer of 2018 Avery and Mandi went together to Rwanda and got to meet many of their DuHope partners and artisans in person. Avery has come away with a new perspective. Seeing the hard truths of our world through the eyes of her 12-year-old daughter, has ultimately changed her Mama, too. They are more passionate than ever about the Lord and what he is doing to change the lives of these women.

Sometimes we take photographs for preserving joy. Sometimes we are preserving a story. But we always do it from a heart of love in the way that mamas love their children, always and forever, no matter what. It is in this way that we want to model for our babies the beauty of God through kindness, charity, and generosity with eternal results. We believe that God has uniquely gifted us to reflect who he is...HOW he is...and what he is passionate about. This Love has to live on after us. That is eternal, too.