When we arrived late last night it started to rain. All night the rain poured in Penohm Penh where our hotel was. When I woke up the first thing I thought was how kind of God to hold the rain off during the conferences. Apparently it had rained all weekend here but not where we were at the conferences. Although we were under cover, rain would have complicated the teaching so incredibly much. It truly amazes me the multitude of kindnessess we learn that our Lord lavishes on us in hindsight.
I also keep thinking about one of the comments a woman had made yesterday at the end of the conference. She was talking about the bracelet exercise we had given them. How, when each women arrived they were assigned a random color bracelet. When they came back together in their local community groups there were many colors around the table. We gave them multicolored threads to then braid together to show what happens when we work together in studying God's word.
She had taken the metaphor a step further and talked about what it looks like to have the different ministries within a church and even different local churches working together to form one beautiful multicolored strand. She had also made the same connection with the team tower building cup game we had played together. I just keep wondering if we saw as much fruit as we did because the men's team came first to work with the pastors and the pastors took the ROADS method and translated it into something that worked for the local culture and when we learned of this we pivoted our whole plan to work with that.
Originally our plan was to come with what we use at wednesday night women's ministry at Calvary - Read, Observe, Understand, Apply- which is similar but slightly different. But with the work that the men and the local pastors did we were able to build upon that and were privileged to witness something beautiful within these women. One woman- a pastors wife who was able to attend with her husband at the pastors conference - shared that witnessing what happed at the pastors conference and then the women's conference was an answer to a prayer she'd been praying herself for a very long time.
After a brief visit to the Russian market, we had lunch at the hotel and debriefed the last two weeks together. We ended the evening on a river cruise with Pisal, Sophorn and other missionaries. Please pray for the kingdom work these teams, families and individuals are doing for the glory of our Lord Jesus, the relationships they're building and the disciple making work they are doing. Pray for open doors, hearts and in-roads in pursuit of bringing the light of the gospel of Jesus Christ to hearts all over. We check in for our flights late tonight and are headed to the airport tomorrow. Please pray for a safe trip back home to the states. Thank you.
I also keep thinking about one of the comments a woman had made yesterday at the end of the conference. She was talking about the bracelet exercise we had given them. How, when each women arrived they were assigned a random color bracelet. When they came back together in their local community groups there were many colors around the table. We gave them multicolored threads to then braid together to show what happens when we work together in studying God's word.
She had taken the metaphor a step further and talked about what it looks like to have the different ministries within a church and even different local churches working together to form one beautiful multicolored strand. She had also made the same connection with the team tower building cup game we had played together. I just keep wondering if we saw as much fruit as we did because the men's team came first to work with the pastors and the pastors took the ROADS method and translated it into something that worked for the local culture and when we learned of this we pivoted our whole plan to work with that.
Originally our plan was to come with what we use at wednesday night women's ministry at Calvary - Read, Observe, Understand, Apply- which is similar but slightly different. But with the work that the men and the local pastors did we were able to build upon that and were privileged to witness something beautiful within these women. One woman- a pastors wife who was able to attend with her husband at the pastors conference - shared that witnessing what happed at the pastors conference and then the women's conference was an answer to a prayer she'd been praying herself for a very long time.
After a brief visit to the Russian market, we had lunch at the hotel and debriefed the last two weeks together. We ended the evening on a river cruise with Pisal, Sophorn and other missionaries. Please pray for the kingdom work these teams, families and individuals are doing for the glory of our Lord Jesus, the relationships they're building and the disciple making work they are doing. Pray for open doors, hearts and in-roads in pursuit of bringing the light of the gospel of Jesus Christ to hearts all over. We check in for our flights late tonight and are headed to the airport tomorrow. Please pray for a safe trip back home to the states. Thank you.