Sometimes a rosary project comes around and it ends up being much more than a rosary project. Such was the case with this one. Joan sent me a couple of pictures of her rosary and asked if I could fix it. Unfortunately, the beads were strung with some kind of cord (like fishing line). Since I only work on chain rosaries, I gave her the option of just having me completely disassemble the rosary and then rebuild it with chain. So that's what I did. When this happens, it turns out to be more of a build of a new rosary than just a simple repair of an old one.

The timing of all of these projects is just based on what I've got in my queue and what the Holy Spirit is saying to me on any particular day. It happened to be a Monday when I started and finished the rosary. Joan and I exchanged a couple of text messages, and so far, it was pretty typical. Then, I told her that if she's interested, she could join in my weekly Rosary podcast, which I do every Monday evening. And that started it all. She told me about a couple of things they have going on in their family and could really use some prayers.

So she joined in that evening for Episode #287 of the Rosary Garden podcast, along with a couple of other family members. I had decided to use her newly rebuilt rosary that night since I didn't have to ship it back to her until the next day. And as we got started, something just hit me. I was holding those beads that I had just worked on for several hours that afternoon. I thought of the people in her family who needed prayers and the tears started coming. That's difficult for me because I'm leading others in the Rosary, which is hard to do if I can't hold it together. Suffice it to say that we all got through it.

She told me the next day that the prayers had started to work. I just love this project. The rosary that I rebuilt was so unique. While it's made with all of her original beads, it's now strung together with silver-plated steel chain. And, most importantly, I have new friends.

Here's a video of me working on this rosary: