Women's Conference... Weekend One

Great is the LORD and greatly to be praised:

We are so blessed and grateful for the help of our friend Lidia, who translated for us in the first weekend of our women's conference (I'm pictured here with Lidia in the middle and one of the students, Mariela, on the right). Not only did she do a wonderful job of translating, but she was also a great encouragement to the Quechua women, as they could see someone of their own culture who was doing the Lord's work. She exhorted them to go out and share the stories with others, and we are hopeful that they will take her words to heart!

Prayer Necessities:

1. Please continue to pray for the women's conference and the women who participated in it. Pray that they would go out and share the two stories they have learned and would return for the second weekend excited and eager to learn the next two.

2. Pray for wisdom for Leah and me as we think through the rest of our time on the mission field and some potential changes that are coming within the next couple of months.

3. Please be in prayer for our bosses, Trent and Kay, who will be returning to the US in September to begin a nine-month stateside assignment. Pray that they will have a smooth transition and an enjoyable time of reconnecting with friends, family, and stateside churches.

Inquiring Minds Wanna Know:

Well, our women's evangelism conference began this past weekend, and the only thing to be expected was that everything was unexpected. :)

Things did actually start out a little discouraging, though it was probably just a cultural misunderstanding. We had advertised the conference in April at a previous conference held in a larger city called Pocoata. We had brought posters and letters describing our women's conference and had talked about it in front of the approximately 300 people present. We had mentioned that it would be held over three weekends, with each Saturday's teaching beginning at 3:00 in the afternoon, and Sunday's beginning at 8:00 am and ending around 11:00 am, just prior to the morning worship service in Ayuma.

The people in Ayuma kept telling us they were expecting about 200 people to attend our conference and, to be honest, we didn't want that many. We knew there was no way all 200 of those people would actually want to learn stories and share them, and it's easier to really teach the Bible stories in a smaller group. But we figured we'd just try to handle it the best we could and, for the subsequent weekends, there would be fewer people, once they figured out what we were doing and expecting of them.

We had agreed to provide half the food, so we loaded our truck up in Sucre with about 80 pounds each of noodles and rice, about 50 pounds of sugar, and plenty of oil, carrots, onions, tomatoes, and a few spices thrown in for good measure. On Saturday morning just before 6:00, we picked up our translator Lidia and hit the road for Ayuma.

We arrived just after noon, expecting to pull up to a big group of people already cooking over a huge fire for the expected crowd of 200-plus. What we found was just the opposite: Ayuma was an absolute ghost town. One church member, Roman, and an elderly lady from another community were standing outside the church building, and that was it. After we knocked on a few doors, we discovered that almost everyone had gone to a market in another town and wouldn't be back until evening. And we were also told that most of the people who would come to the conference probably wouldn't even come until Sunday!

Now that was a problem because I was supposed to teach the creation story on Saturday, and Leah was going to teach the fall of man on Sunday. If most of the women didn't come until Sunday, they'd already be a story behind. And creation is a really important story to set the stage for the Gospel.

So, needless to say, we were pretty discouraged by all of this. Our conference was set to start in less than three hours, and there were five people there, three of which were teachers or translators!

All we knew to do was to start peeling potatoes, knowing that would be the first thing our Quechua friends would do when they arrived, and a few people slowly began to arrive (here are some of our friends peeling potatoes). We had decided that we would start at 4:30, regardless of who was there. But, at 4:00, when there were still were no more than 15 people present, we decided to take a short walk to gather our thoughts and regroup.

Leah suggested that we pray, and we each said a prayer asking for the Lord's help and wisdom in how to go about things. And Lidia was very encouraging in her prayer, asking that the Lord would give us strength and wisdom to be able to proceed. After that, we all felt much better.

We returned to the town and decided to begin the conference at 5:30 with Leah teaching a health class. She was teaching on how to prevent back injuries and on good nutrition, and it went really well. We had about 30 women there, and they asked some great questions. It seemed like we were finally getting things rolling!

After that, we had some dinner (which was prepared mostly by the men) and then returned to the church building as I began to teach the creation story. At that point, we had around 40-50 people, some of whom had walked a great distance to come. There were three teenaged girls from the community of Saqa Saqa who had walked four hours to get there. So we were excited to see what the Lord would do with that great sacrifice on their part!

They and several others seemed very interested and, at the end of an hour and a half, they had learned the story and were able to tell it back with very little prompting. We had also explained to the women very clearly that they would be asked two questions when they returned for the second weekend of the conference: 1) Do you remember the stories? and 2) With whom did you share them?

Lidia, Leah, and I climbed into bed exhausted around 10:00 that night. We stayed with our friend Nelly, the lady who has learned nearly all of the stories we've shared in Ayuma. She had come and learned the story of creation on Saturday but told us she wouldn't be able to be present on Sunday when Leah taught the fall of man.

But the next morning, Nelly had changed her mind. She told us that she had gotten up early to cook for her family so that she could come and learn the next story. We were so excited to hear of her willingness to sacrifice to obey the Lord! We knew He was pleased with this!

We had planned to start teaching the story at about 9:00 on Sunday but, as usual, our plans were not what came to pass. Leah was finally able to start teaching a little after 10:00 but, once again, the women did well in learning. At Lidia's suggestion, we even broke up into two groups to do a competition: A drama of the story of Adam and Eve's sin in Eden. It went great, and it was obvious there were about 10-15 women who had the story down really well!

But we were saddened to see that Nelly did not come after all. She showed up for the last few minutes of the story, asked Leah to teach it to her, but left again before Leah had the opportunity. We found out later that she went to help make bread for the local school's upcoming celebration. It made us sad to see that, but we are hopeful that we will have the opportunity to catch her up with that story when we return to Ayuma next week. Or, better still, we hope that one of the other women who was at the conference will teach it to her.

We're not yet sure how successful the conference was, but we will know more on the second weekend. The ladies will arrive again (we hope!) on August 13 and 14, so please continue to pray that the Lord will work in their hearts and that they will be obedient to learn His Word and share it and will thus fulfill the Great Commission!