Yesterday a group of four women from our team presented a women's seminar to 5 of CHO's female leaders. Our focus was how to grow in a relationship with God. Our seminar focused on intimacy with God, community with insiders, and community with outsiders. It was an intimate setting that allowed us to really connect with each other. It was amazing to see how different their lives are from our own on a day-to-day basis, but also how similar they are overall. All of us had come to have a personal relationship with Jesus later in life, we all have a passion that God had given us that we are trying to direct for God's purpose, we all struggle with how to share the gospel and all struggle to find time to spend with God.
What struck us is that we grew up in "Christian" families on the American side, and they grew up in Buddhist households, and their faith in Christ has now put them at odds with their families. One of the women told us that her parents do not want a relationship with her now that she is a Christian.
So, the women explained to us that they struggle with loving their families who don't understand their faith and being true to Christ at the same time. All of them had stories that their Buddhist friends and family believe that Christians do not honor and love their parents. So the women told us that try to overcome that objection by explaining what God says about honoring your parents in the Bible, and also by living their lives as examples.
They also had heartbreaking and inspiring stories that make our daily struggles pale in comparison. Our interpreter did not have the opporunity for education in her home village and had to work to help support her family. Her richer friends gave her their old textbooks, which she used to study on her own and teach herself. Eventually, she left her family and went to a larger city to pursue her studies, and worked to pay her way at school. She said that some days she would only eat one meal so that she would have enough money to buy school supplies. She "lucked into"working in a Christian household, and that is how she came to know Christ. Since then, she has worked at church planting and now is the supervisor for all the schools on a mat.
One other woman told us she had an abusive husband, and had babies who died. Her husband also died shortly thereafter, and she has lived on her own since she was 25 (now 40). She felt hopeless and that she did not have a reason to live. She came to know Christ in 2003 through CHO, the organization we are working with. She met Jesus there and God has now given her a job and a family through the people she works with. She teaches sewing to women who have been trafficked.
We really felt the Holy Spirit at work in our time with them.
-Stephanie and Ashley
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