Women's Meeting, Last One

Here is the final installment of Roy Merritt's report on the women's meeting.

Top Photo:  Women formed prayer groups on the lawn while waiting for meals.

Middle photo:  The men worked 18 hours a day to feed the crowd.  It took three hours to serve each meal, with supper often ending after 9:00 p.m.

Lower photo:  Food at last!  

More Photos of the Women's Meeting

I can only imagine how wonderful the singing was when all these ladies praised the Lord together!  

Women's Meeting, Part 2

Roy Merritt continues:

Numbers eventually reached 4000 women and uncounted numbers of children.  Men hauled all the benches from the auditorium, all the classroom chairs, and all the benches from the dining halls and packed them in the high school quadrangle.  

The photographer could not get high enough to picture everyone in one frame.  

Report of the Women's Meeting

Roy Merritt sent out a report of the national women's meeting that was held at Namwianga last week.   He writes:

Women of the Zambian church gather once a year.  This year we were the hosts.  We expected 2,000 to 2,500.  Men of the Namwianga congregation prepared the campus and braced themselves to cook for such a crowd.  Our high school dormitories handle about 300, and our college looks after about 200.  We knew our facilities would be on overload.  And so they came . . .

and they came . . .

and they CAME!

The Important Things

The Important Things

I will admit that there are days when I get really frustrated with life here. Those are the days when I long for organization, efficiency, and punctuality, the days when I dream of being able to accomplish tasks quickly and simply. I wistfully remember the procedures, schedules, and checklists that ruled my former life in America.

And then I go out into the bush and God helps me see what really matters.

Last weekend we were invited to speak at a leadership training seminar in Mabuyu. While David and the men met inside the church building, the women and I gathered in a grass enclosure in a cornfield behind the building. The women sat on mats made of mealie meal sacks sewn together. In true Zambian fashion, they sat with their legs straight out in front of them, their backs erect. At first I was determined to join them in this, and I lasted through the first hour before excruciating pain convinced me to accept the offer of a chair.

Laura Oldenburg was also a speaker on Friday, and the two of us took turns addressing the ladies on topics related to leadership. I used the story of Nehemiah for my lessons, discussing ways that Nehemiah modeled the characteristics of a good leader. The ladies were quite interested in the story, and most seemed to be hearing it for the first time.

I love teaching Zambian women because they are not shy about expressing their reactions to the lesson. When I described how the enemies of Nehemiah opposed him, there were murmurs of shock and disbelief. Later one of the older women spoke up, “This is the same thing we face here! Nehemiah had enemies who tried to stop his work, and we have enemies who are trying to stop the work of our churches!” There were vigorous nods all around. They listened intently as we discussed ways to deal with challenges and difficulties.

On Saturday I returned to continue the program and taught all morning. The leader told me that they would eat lunch at 12:30, so I stopped then and we made our way to the cooking area where goat meat and nshima were being prepared over open fires. We stood there awhile as the women visited in Tonga. A few minutes later, my translator came to me. “The nshima is not ready. The women are saying that they do not want to stand around here. We want to hear more of your lessons. Come teach us. We will eat later.” And that’s exactly what we did. We sat down again in the grass enclosure and studied more of the Word of God. It was 2:00 before we finally ate.

Times like these remind me that there are many things that are more important than organization, efficiency, and schedules. Zambian women who would rather study the Bible than visit or eat know what is really important.

Kalweza Women's Meeting

We had just gotten home on Saturday when Rodgers Namuswa came by to tell us that he had scheduled Cindy Robinson and me to speak at a women's meeting on Sunday. We recruited Michele Broadway to teach the children and Misozi to translate for us.


Sunday afternoon we headed for Kalweza where women from several area congregations had been meeting since Thursday. They had slept in the church building and in grass enclosures and had cooked all their meals over open fires. We arrived at 2:20 and found that they had not yet had their lunch. Rodgers asked the women in charge what they wanted to do and they said, "We will feed on the Word of God first and then we will eat our food." How humbling it is to find such receptive and eager listeners!

There were about 150 women gathered inside a grass shelter--perhaps much like the brush arbor structures used for revivals in America's past years. Rodgers told us that the women gathered the grasses and the men cut the poles and lashed them together. Photos above show both the outside and inside of the structure. The women sat on mats made of feed sacks.