WOODINVILLE – Using plastic beads and string, more than a dozen women at St. Teresa of Calcutta Parish are working to spread the devotion of the rosary around the world.

“The rosary has been a big thing in our family,” said parishioner Katherine Heidenreich, who helps organize the Rosary Makers group at the Woodinville parish. Heidenreich said she and her siblings learned to pray the rosary from their mother and “when problems arose, I pulled out a rosary.”

Parishioner Jenny Rodriguez said she got involved with the group, founded in 2011, because she wanted an activity to share with her daughters, who were then 10 and 13.

“It sounded like something we could do as a family,” Rodriguez said.

They’re still making rosaries and have made about 300 since the pandemic began, Rodriguez said.

Rodriguez, Heidenreich and the other members have assembled some 8,000 rosaries since the group began. They’ve sent rosaries to Europe, Mexico Vietnam, Russia, Africa and the Philippines.

“We like to put them in a missionary’s hand,” Heidenreich said.

Rosaries assembled by a group of women at St. Teresa of Calcutta Parish in Woodinville are sent to missionaries around the world. Photo: Courtesy Jenny Rodriguez

St. Teresa’s pastor, Father Frank Schuster, took some of the rosaries to Kenya in January as a gift to kids in an orphanage supported by the parish’s Africa Orphan Program.

Heidenreich said she decided to start the Rosary Makers group after watching an EWTN program highlighting Our Lady’s Rosary Makers, which sends out a bimonthly newsletter with requests for rosaries.

It takes about 15 minutes for a rosary to be assembled and the process is very calming, Heidenreich said. Before the pandemic, the members gathered to make rosaries and socialize.

Now they pick up supplies and drop off rosaries at Heidenreich’s home.

“COVID really screwed up everything,” she said.

The rosary makers “are truly a faithful group of parishioners who love our Blessed Mother and the church,” Father Schuster said in an email. “Their time together making rosaries provides a spiritual service to those who receive them while also offering a time for fellowship and prayer.”