Ladies in Service

The ladies of Kasiya held a meeting last month. They cordially invited me to attend this meeting earlier in the month but due to another engagement I was unable to be with them. They insisted I join them and they willingly changed the date to suit my schedule. I thought that was so sweet of them and I felt really honored.

The morning of October 16th, 2009 Milika, Shupie and I set out for an hour and half drive to Kasiya, in the village of Chimutu, all prepared to spend the night with the women there. I had the generator and lights to string up for the evening meeting. About thirty minutes into our journey we came across a road side market. We decided to stop and buy some vegetables to contribute to the meeting. Twenty five head of cabbage, three live chickens, cooking oil and three reed mats to sleep on were purchased. We had the back packed and off we were on our merry way again. A guide met us along the way to lead us to the village. Wow! what a reception. The ladies all left the meeting shed singing to welcome us. We felt very special.

After the usual traditional greetings we had all kinds of help unloading. They wasted no time in telling me that it was my turn to present my lesson. I was more than glad to get started. There were roughly 100 women present and more were expected to arrive later in the afternoon. I taught my first lesson with good old Shupie to translate for me. She is so good at this and I never have to worry about her messing up. When we finished we had a question and answer period before the lunch hour. Most of the questions were good and many of them have been asked before so I felt comfortable answering them, always using the Bible as reference.

It thrilled me to see so many of our students that we have known for 4 years, and some longer. You would be proud to know how these ladies have grown spiritually. Seven years ago none of them would even want to lead a prayer, claiming they did not know how. Few knew the OldTestament stories and even less about the New Testament. Today they can stand up in front of crowd to read from the Bible, lead a prayer and teach a simple lesson. That is progress. They organized this meeting by themselves with the help of the men of the congregation. The preteens and teenagers were not left out in this meeting. They had made time for them to have special classe. That was impressive.

It took courage for these women to speak in front of a crowd and I am sure it was mentally exhausting for some. Some not only spoke but also did a lot of manual labor in the open kitchen. This included chopping the wood, carrying the water from the well, making fires and cooking out in the open in the heat. The one thing I noticed right away about the whole village was no shade trees. A very desolate looking place that when the wind blew we were showered in dust and with no doubt swallowed a lot of it.

Lunch consisted of nsima and beans. I did not envy any of the cooks, out in the hot sun but I heard no complains. Made me deeply appreciate my electric stove. It took a while to feed this many women and lots of little ones. But everything went real smooth. My hat goes off to them.

Little did I know that I was to speak the rest of the day. I felt very honored to do this. I figured I had the opportunity, I was going to take advantage of it. The topics were left up to me to choose so I tried to stick to topics that I thought they needed. One of them is knowing their role in the church. I finished just before dusk and had time to turn the generator on before supper. Ed would have been impressed to see me string the lights up and jump start the generator all by myself. The women were very glad to have light for the evening. After supper I taught one more lesson and I was ready to call it a day.

A couple in the village had very generously given up their house for us to use for the night. We ended up five of us in this house, barely room to move around in but we all managed to spread our mats out for the night. I will have to admit I got very little sleep but it is an experience and I thoroughly enjoyed every bit of it. I knew it was but for one day and I could endure.

Sunday morning Ed and Isaac joined us along with all the other men and conducted the worship service. Ed preached a very good sermon on " Religious but lost". These hard working women still had the job of cooking for over 200 people when services were over. Quite a job with no modern conveniences.

These ladies did a wonderful job of hosting this meeting. They had a vision, a plan and worked the plan. They are gallantly serving the Lord in his vineyard and they are to be commended.

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