Monday, June 27th: Valley of Hope Women's Conference

Haitian Bible used during the women's conference

A conference attendee working on a craft  

Day 3:  Monday, June 27

Today, we have officially been here for half of our week-long mission trip. Today, we traveled back to Bernard to the Valley of Hope Church for the Women’s conference. Susie will be leading the women on a study to teach them how to read God’s word and we will have some crafts and a hand scrub with lotion as a way to treat the ladies to something nice. 

We arrive later than expected and realize that the women have been waiting for over an hour for us to arrive.  God has given the Haitian people so much more patience than we have in the USA.  I cannot remember the last time that I waited on an event to start for an hour without complaint.  And realizing that some of the women walk a couple of hours puts things into perspective.

We had 45 ladies of the church in attendance for the conference.  The presence of God was in the place as there was singing, prayer, and a deep desire to learn from Susie’s message. Pastor Maxeau helped with the translation.  Each of the team members shared with the ladies how people know that we are Christians. 

For me (Mandy), I realized how to be a better servant of others as we had made a hand scrub from sugar, olive oil, and water.  Amanda and I showed the ladies how to use it to scrub their hands and then rinse their hands.  After each lady rinsed their hands, I dried their hands and put lotion on them. It was amazing to see the reaction of some of the women to having the lotion on their hands.  I gestured for them to smell the lotion (a lavender scent) and the smiling faces made quite an impact on me.  I think that many of these women in this rural area of Haiti had not had lotion on their hands before.

The ladies also did some crafts including a faith bracelet that Amanda helped them to make with each color representing part of the salvation message. Kristine helped the women with drawing designs on solid colored bandanas.  The women from the church’s choir decorated white bandanas to wear to Sunday services. We had noticed that the women of the choir wore white lace on their heads during the Sunday morning worship service.

One of the most powerful parts of the service was the time of prayer before the lunch.  Pastor Maxeau instructed each of us to pray with the ladies while they sang songs.  It was impactful to say the least to pray with different ladies of the church.  

As we ended the women’s conference, several women shared how they had been blessed about how to learn about reading, studying, and applying God’s word to their lives.   A few last hugs, a meal together with our team, the pastors of the church and their families, and we are again back to our lodging for another day’s work completed.

We had a long drive back this evening as traffic was heavy. It was closer to 3 hours rather than our normal 2 hour drive.