Today we had our third annual Ladies Tea and we were blessed to have the ladies from Orange, Texas help out again. We are so blessed to be partnering up with them! Awesome church! Four beautiful ladies came early and helped arrange flowers, cut fruit and make gift bags.
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| Madison making beautiful arrangements! |
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| Alice and Patsy blessing the island ladies with gifts. The smelly powder was a hit!!! |
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| Beautiful Victoria happily cutting fruit! |
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| How beautiful is that?! |
I decided to invite all new island ladies ... with the exception of Esther who helps with the singing and Zenola who helps with driving all the ladies home. We had ladies from Mudd Hole, Sandy Bay, La Colonia, Coxen Hole, West Bay, and French Harbour:
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| Holding up pillowcase children's dresses from a church in Ohio |
My vision for the tea hadn't changed though: to provide a blessed environment for ladies to gather. The women of this island work very hard! They are often Mom and Dad, they go without when there isn't enough food, they hustle to make the ends meet, so I love to provide a place where they can be spoiled a little bit, a place to have some fun and play some games, sing some songs and to sit, uninterrupted, and listen to His Word. And lastly: PRAY!!
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| We played a bingo mixer and Estrelitta won a copy of Bob's book |
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| Yummy! |
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| Beautiful-ness |
This time I spoke from Luke 13 about the crippled woman. She suffered for 18 long years and yet through it all she still hobbled her way to the synagogue. Jesus saw her. He called her forward. He healed her. When the religious rulers rebuked them for coming to be healed on the Sabbath, He stood up for her and called her 'daughter of Abraham' Abraham was the father of faith and He affirmed her faith by calling her a daughter of Abraham! Everyone saw that she was crippled, they only saw the outward, but Jesus knew that she was a woman of faith. I believe that is why He noticed her. He wasn't seeing her physical disability, He was seeing that this woman who hadn't had her prayers answered for 18 years was still believing!!! He was, and is always drawn to faith!! He recommissioned her into the community for who she really was: a woman of faith! Many of us are praying and waiting. He sees us. He knows. We may look crippled, or poor, or under privileged, or dysfunctional but He sees deeper then anyone. He sees us!! He celebrates our faith!!! May we always hold true to Him and His word... no matter what.
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| Esther, Melissa, Cindy, Cheryl, Maria, Alic, Zenola, Estrelitta, Me,Patsy, Victoria, |
We had a special time of prayer in small groups and left very encouraged and blessed!! I realized how much I love ministering to women!
As the ladies were leaving, Bob was driving up the driveway, and I heard Zenola say, Oh what a nice surprise!!! Our friend from Holland was supposed to be coming and I thought it was Marco. Can you imagine my sheer delight and shock when I saw our son David sitting in the passenger seat??!!!
What a surprise!! What a blessed surprise!! There was a great seat sale flying direct from Montreal and so they booked the ticket on Friday and he arrived on Monday.
I will blog more about our visit later.....
JOY!!!
