When Cindy Etheridge went in for each chemotherapy treatment of 2013 she took her pillow.

But the pillow wasn’t just something that was there to offer physical comfort. It was something that offered spiritual comfort.

Etheridge was the first recipient of a prayer shawl from the Princess Class Ministry at First Baptist Church. The class had taken a shawl, placed their hands on it and prayed for her before giving the shawl to her. She’d been there.

When she was in treatment, Etheridge would roll the shawl up and use it as a pillow as the medicine burned through her veins, resting in the comfort that prayer warriors were standing behind her in the battle for her life.

“I can tell you, the fact that I knew godly women had prayed over that shawl brought me comfort and brought me peace,” Etheridge said. “I felt like their prayers were with me when I was in the chemo chair.”

The shawl ministry started with Hilda Blair, who at the time wasn’t a member of the class and wasn’t thinking of launching a ministry. She just wanted to explore something she’d read in a book years before about a knitting circle that made prayer shawls.

“I thought it sounded nice, so I found a pattern and made one, and I loved it,” she said. “Something in it just clicked for me.”

After making a few shawls, she gave them away, feeling compelled to make more.

“I didn’t really have an outlet for them,” she said. “My daughter was going to a Bible study class, and one of the members had been diagnosed with cancer, so they gave it to her. They just jumped on the idea, and it just took off. I had prayed that the Lord would use me and that talent for his will, and He did.”

Since that shawl was given to the cancer patient — Etheridge — Blair has joined the class, and through reaching out to the community they’ve been able to give 77 shawls to those in need.

Some have gone to people going through medical situations, some through tough times and some to people going a long way from home who might just get lonely.

“When I am making the shawl, if I know who it is for, I pray for the person while I am making it,” Blair said. “If I am making some so we can stay ahead, I just say, ‘Lord, I know you already know who this shawl is for,’ and it has been amazing — when I get that one made, that is the exactly the one that somebody needs.”

Nancy Bowman, who acts as a spokeswoman for the ministry, said when they have a shawl to bless before it goes to an intended recipient, it’s not a long, drawn-out ritual — but it is very intentional.

“We all do it during the Sunday School hour,” she said. “We gather around, and if the person is sitting there, we all touch each other, have a hand on them, and as many of us as can touch it also touch the shawl as we pray for them.”

The shawl ministry is just one outlet the group uses to try to give some kind of help or comfort to as many people as possible. They also make chicken pot pies from scratch and freeze them, distributing them to those who have need as the need arises, and find ways to be as hands-on as possible in the community, with some members even leading a Bible study in the county jail.

“We have evolved to be mission-minded,” Bowman said. “It was helping a fellow class member, then it was somebody in the church, then it was somebody in the community.”

And while some missions don’t leave a physical reminder — food is eaten and appreciated, even remembered years later, but it’s gone after the meal — the prayer shawls remain.

And those have served as a testimony of the class’s dedication to helping people feel support far beyond the Miss-Lou.

The class has a map pinned with locations of where the shawls have gone, and while most are local, others have crossed the continental United States and some have gone as far away as Afghanistan, New Zealand and Wales.

“I had no idea when I started this that it would take off like it did,” Blair said. It has just been the Lord’s will in it, the Lord’s work that it has taken off. It has been amazing.”