Women With A Mission Conference

As a team, our primary focus of our trip was the Women With A Mission conference in Akividu, Andhra Pradesh.  That was the job that we were brought to India to do...share the Word, share His love, and give encouragement to our sisters in Christ during a 3-day conference focused on "The Body of Christ".  At one point in our months of preparation, we were given the impression that we would be speaking to upwards of 500 women...most of us were relieved when we arrived and had only 250 women to listen to us!

I think that I can speak for most of our team in saying that public speaking in front of large groups of people is not an everyday occurrence in our lives and that this was taking us out of our comfort zones a bit.  However, we knew from the beginning that this was our goal and purpose and knew to pray and rely on the Holy Spirit to speak through us.

After all of the travel changes and difficulties that we had just getting to the town, we knew that satan was not only trying to discourage us, he was working overtime to discourage the leaders and the women that would be traveling great distances to come and be with us.  BUT GOD...He is much greater and more powerful than satan ever could think of being and the next morning, the church was filled with His people gathering together to worship and learn together.  

Because many of the women were coming from different areas of the state, not all of them arrived at the same time.  One TRUCKLOAD of ladies arrived after our team had taken our seats on the stage.  Prati, the national director for Women With A Mission, leaned over and pointed out the sight to me.  I grabbed my camera and rushed out the door to capture these 30 women climbing down out of the back of a truck with their "luggage" for the next 3 days.  I only was able to snap a few pictures before these women were coming down the sidewalk past me and towards the church.  

Each one of these women chose to make eye contact with the crazy, white chick with a camera and some even reached out to hug me or shake my hand saying "Namaste" or "Praise the Lord" as they passed by.   In that very moment, God set my vision on "her".  "Her" was not one specific woman, but it was recognizing each one of these ladies as an INDIVIDUAL.

India as a whole is overwhelming to think about...it's the second most populated country in the world, it's on the complete opposite side of the world, it is a Hindu nation, their culture is different from mine, they eat a lot of curry and gravies, and they speak a lot of different languages that I have NO CLUE about!  I was overwhelmed about having to present myself in front of so many people and God made sure I knew that it was just about "her".  I wasn't coming to change the masses, I was coming for "her".  In my human-ness, I really wish I knew who she was, which woman it was that came to hear whatever it was that God said through me, but it doesn't matter.  As long as I was obedient, I pray that He was able to use me some way, some how to touch a life. 

This post is just all over the place and random, but there is just so much of the scene to capture and I just CAN'T seem to transport you to that moment in time!

As our team of 6 (5 from Wichita and Prati) sat on the stage and looked out over the sea of faces eager to learn, I sat there trying to figure out what made us special.  In the US, women may take off work for a 3-day weekend mega conference like Beth Moore or Women of Faith.  In India, we were the "mega-conference" in a modest Baptist church filled with plastic chairs and a praise band of electric drums and a synthesizer.  And I realized that it had nothing to do with the crazy blond, the 2 red heads, and 2 brunettes from America...it had everything to do with the life and love that we have because of Christ.  They were thirsty to hear from God.  They would have come to the conference regardless of WHO was there...that was humbling and terrifying all at once because I really didn't want to screw up whatever it was that God was going to do!

In the last several years in my job, I have had to learn how to be a public speaker of sorts. I do not enjoy it, but I do it because it's part of my job description.  I have become more comfortable sharing about specific things because they are part of my daily routine, my "specialties" per se.  I can stand up and fill at least an hour with anecdotes and suggestions without any notice in these areas, but other things require me to study, prepare, write notes, do power points and outlines, and still I forget things and am not as fluid in speaking.  As I got my speaking "assignments" for India, I knew I'd have to study, prepare, write notes, etc in order to present anything of worth to these women.  I hadn't done enough preparation and I knew it.  And unfortunately, my spiritual life and quiet times don't rival Beth Moore and Billy Graham's to where I have Scripture memorized, stored up, and ready to go off the cuff.  I had two different sections of "The Body of Christ" to teach and share with these women...each of them were supposed to last an hour.  Um, I think clocks run much slower in India than they do in the US!  It sure felt like an hour or two or three...but I'm pretty sure my watch showed that I only spoke for 20 minutes the first time and a bit over 1/2 an hour the second time.  

As a last minute addition to our curriculum for the conference, I also "volunteered" for a 2-hour inspirational message slot.  I really don't know that I thought that through, but I'm always saying "I can" to things whether I WANT to do them or not!  I have been given the ability so I suppose I need to do something with it.  I didn't have a clue what I was going to say that would be "inspirational" to a bunch of Indian women and then God rescued me!  On the morning of the second of 3 days of the conference, we were told that once again, our schedule was changing!  We were having to end the conference early in order to be able to leave the area we were in due to the uprising happening throughout the state.  So, we were going to cram the last 2 days of the conference into 1!  I quickly offered up "some" (MOST) of my inspirational message time so that we could cover all of the curriculum for the conference and allow us some time to pray over these women that were going to commit to reaching 2 other people in their village for Christ in the coming year.  What an amazing task!

This was the concentration of our trip, a conference focused on women.  We were able to connect with them in spite of our cultural, language, and socio-economic differences.  The power of the Holy Spirit filled that church and touched lives in a mighty way.  There really are no words to describe how much unity we had with them as they sang in Telugu and we just clapped along with them.  There were times when we got to praising the One True God who is the same yesterday, today, and forever...the same God in Kansas and India...the Almighty Redeemer that set our feet to dancing...and we were home.