Women With Purpose

I haven't posted about our ladies ministry in several months. I'm permanently behind. Every 7 days everything stops though and we have a day of rest/family day. That day is tomorrow! So yippie!

We needed a name… anything that can bring more identity and belonging. Our women's ministry needed all that, so this is the name we chose:

{Women with Purpose}

We have been studying the purpose of God's design when he created men, women, and marriage. Here it is up on the wall in our ladies room. It is made out of foam paper and hot glued on the wall. Jimmy bought me one of those fancy digital paper cutters for Christmas, so I waited till I had that thing to cut those letters. This logo has been up since December and I still only have a photo of it taken with my phone… permanently behind.

We meet the third Sunday night of each month. Each month we switch back and forth. One month we have a recipe that ties into the lesson somehow and the next we have a craft.

{Eden's favorite months are the craft ones!}

I thought it might be difficult to come up with recipes because everything has to be made on a stovetop since most people here don't have an oven. Also, the recipes have to be reproducible, so all the ingredients need to be things that they would normally buy or have available in their local tiendas. 

Soups are popular here. Honestly most meals are a whatever you got all thrown into a large pot together with a little chicken bullion. Around November there were a lot of gourds being sold around here, called Ayotes. 

 I always thought they were pretty, but I never cooked anything with them before. Once I cut one open and pureed it, it turned out to be pretty similar to pumpkin (only the ayotes shaped like the one below), so that's what we did. We made pumpkin soup.

This tied in pretty good with the lesson when we were celebrating God's purpose for men. We made a whole bunch, tried it ourselves and then served some to the men's class next-door. They were happy!

Each month I feel a little more comfortable teaching these ladies. I really am praying that God would use these times to knit us all together so that we could encourage each other in our walk in a non-judgmental way. 

Over half of the ladies can't read. That is something I want to find more resources on, teaching people who grew up illiterate. I think their mind receives and organizes information differently and I really want to get better at presenting truths in a way that would be more helpful to them. For now I try to use a lot of wordless visuals. I want to do better at reciting verses together too. If you can't read, how would you ever memorize scripture on your own. With the kids on Thursday nights (half of whom can't read yet) we memorize a verse a week, during class, so I think I want to start doing that with the ladies. That would be part of God's Word that they could always have with them. 

Here is a before picture of our ladies room, when we first found this property:

 You can see it keeps getting better and better. My mom made curtains for our ladies room when she was down here. That helped a lot.

 Once we all get in the room together I usually get in a hurry and forget to take photos… I'm going to blame that on Jimmy because he is constantly making jokes about my class going too long! Here are a couple photos I did take of our class in February:

That month we were celebrating God's beautiful purpose for women, so we made flowers. Some chose pins and some chose hair barrettes. 

 I've seen several of these flowers worn since then! 

 When you think of it, please pray for our ladies ministry. I want to use my time with them wisely. Please pray that God will bless our moments together and do a work in all of our lives. Thanks!