Sister Lauren Spence vowed to stop after knitting her 12th bear.

But she had three rolls of yarn left over. So she knitted three more.

A short while later, a maintenance worker visited Sister Lauren to fix the floor in her room atop the main building of the School Sisters of Notre Dame campus on Good Counsel Hill. While in her room, he couldn’t help but ask about the little teddy bears sitting quietly near the wall.

When Sister Lauren told him that she was knitting for the Mother Bear Project and would be sending the bears to African children who had lost their parents to AIDS, the man was stunned. He looked Sister Lauren in the eye and said, “This bear is going to a girl in Africa that has nothing.”

Sister Lauren was hooked.

“That man was my first inspiration,” Sister Lauren said. “He told me the girl that got my teddy bear would have nothing. I’ve been trying to fill that nothing.”

Fifteen bears turned into 100. One hundred bears turned into 500. And with the help of donors and the encouragement of her friends and Notre Dame family, Sister Lauren finished bear No. 1,000 recently.

That’s a lot of nothing for one person to fill.

And a quick scan of her room proves she’s not done. Dozens, if not hundreds, balls of yarn sit in boxes. Several knitting needles adorn her desktop. And, of course, there’s the wall of completed bears, the most convincing indication that Sister Lauren isn’t slowing down.

“Sister Lauren is amazing,” said Amy Berman, a Minnetonka native who started the Mother Bear Project some four years ago. “Each one of her bears is a work of art, and she puts so much love into each one.”

Sister Lauren asks people to sponsor her bears. Sponsors choose the colors of the bear’s outfit and then pray over the bear when it is finished. Sister Lauren then writes the name of the sponsor on the bear’s tag so that whichever child receives it knows there’s a specific person somewhere in the world who is sending them love and prayers.

“At Mother Bear Project, we believe that every bear has a story,” Berman said. “Infected children have asked to be buried with their bear. Some have called it ‘my only friend.’”

Sister Lauren said she’s had children as young as 5 years old want to sponsor bears. And she can’t help but be moved watching these young children clasp their hands, close their eyes and pray earnest prayers for someone they don’t know a half-world away.

Sister Lauren has seen grown men cry holding her bears and has seen whole families break down under the emotional weight of giving something to a child who has nothing. She’s had anonymous donors send her materials and she had one woman slip her a $20 bill because she didn’t know how to knit but wanted to help.

“What can you do?” Sister Lauren said. “When you have people doing things like that, how can you let them down?”