Podcast: Download (47.5KB)
Subscribe: RSS
with Martha Kilpatrick and hosted by John Enslow
Special Guest Rosemary Lokers and Jean Mixon
(J) Well here we are back in Honduras, and we’ve come this time to put on a woman’s conference (Being Sarah’s Daughter) for a lot of the women from the churches around the area of Santa Rosa De Copan, as well as several women came from Tegucigalpa and the rural area’s of Limón, Santa Rosita. And it’s been real interesting; the focus of the money to the poor has been material, but this whole trip has really been a shift from that to the house of their heart. So I’ve been real impressed that not only are we bringing financial resources into impoverished areas, but it’s also impoverished hearts. And I’m real excited that the message that you brought Martha about forgiveness. You have a land of women here that are mostly oppressed, and you brought in a message that was really wonderful about forgiveness and about overcoming and victory in your situation regardless of what your situation is. You said this isn’t a marriage conference, this is a conference for those that are married, divorced, widowed, or hoping you said. I thought that was cute. You’ve always brought in messages of hope, of deliverance, of freedom for captives, and so we put on this conference and we were able to bring these ladies in at no cost. And we just said, we want to put this on for you. We want you to come in and you don’t have to cook, you don’t have to worry about making the beds or cleaning the house or anything like that. We want to really bless you, just come and receive, that’s your job, come and receive, don’t worry about doing anything else. And so in that vein Martha, why don’t you tell us about the hotel.
(M) By American standards it was probably a two star hotel; very clean, it had a beautiful pool and a lovely dining room. And we were so excited to offer a conference free at the hotel, with three free meals that these ladies didn’t have to serve and cook. Through the generosity of supporters we able to just give this as a gift. It’s hard for us to comprehend what a big gift this was.
(J) Right, sure.
(M) The women ranged from the rural extremely poor to the high class who still are not in the range of the wealthy as we know in our country. There was a whole range of people there; but most of these people are not accustomed to stay in a hotel, and the rural people had never stayed in a hotel, had they Rosemary.
(R) No they never stayed in a hotel before, several told me they’d never stayed in a hotel.
(J) Well the thing that I was amazed at is that you even had to go and tell them how to work all the facilities of the hotel. (R) Yeah, when they checked in there were sixty women that came to the conference, and there were several that came from three different rural villages and we knew actually even before the conference, Bob said to me, you’re going to have to show those women how to use the showers. And I said, yeah you’re right. So when the rural women came we took them up to their rooms and showed them how to use the showers, because they number one never had been anywhere where there was hot water before. So some of these women maybe for the very first time in their lives were taking a hot shower; I don’t really know, but maybe. And there was good water pressure too in that hotel, wasn’t’ there, which even for me that’s a treat. So they went up to the room, two of the women that are real dear to us, we took them up to their room and there were two double sized beds in the room. And when they walked in and saw the hotel room, their eyes were just as big as saucers and they said to me, who else is staying in here with us? And I said, nobody, just you two. And I threw myself on the bed and said you can sprawl out and sleep not touching anybody. Because you have to understand that in these rural homes there’s only one bedroom in the house no matter how many kids there are; I’ve never seen a rural house with more. Well most have just one room and they all sleep in the same room and sometimes there’ll be two or three people to a single bed. We have a dear friend that told us he was 24 before he ever slept on a bed. His whole life he slept on a sack on a dirt floor, and that was his bed until he was 24 years old. So for them, for a woman to come to this conference and sleep in a bed, a double sized bed all by herself, clean, nice sheets, hot water, that just was a real treat for them.
(M) And the hotel extended itself I felt for these women and gave us very delicious meals with meat, even beef, which is not usual in meals in Santa Rosa. They were just wonderful women. The first night Rosemary had to translate, so it was Rosemary and me, and the Holy Spirit was deeply there the first night, Jean felt it too, felt His presence. But we had a wall of opposition and it was like, oh my goodness, the translating became difficult, everything became difficult. I felt like I had hit a wall. Well, the next day after the conference, the women acknowledged, they didn’t know we felt that, but they acknowledged that they felt cold. And one lady said the Lord told her it was cold. But the next day there was a breakthrough in the Spirit and we cried together and we laughed together, and I told them stories, which is what they love to hear. The conference was on the daughter of Sarah, and I realized many of things about Sarah in doing this, I’m always the one who learns, that she was the only woman listed in the Hebrews 11 people of faith. So she’s quite an example for women. The secret of Sarah was that she hoped in God. So that’s kind of what the conference was about. So how do you think the women received it Rosemary?
(R) I heard several comments, even the first night when we believed that there was so much opposition that it seemed so difficult from where we were. But by the next morning I had heard several testimonies from women, through good friends of mine, telling me that the women were saying that this was an incredible message and that they were receiving so much from the teaching. The second day, the Holy Spirit was, He just did it. And it was just so fun to watch what He was doing in our hearts and their hearts. It was just a wonderful time and they just received it; I didn’t hear anything negative, everyone’s comments were very positive. And there were many that were touched by the Holy Spirit, and there were women that were just crying, weeping, some just sobbing uncontrollably by the end of the messages.
(M) I felt that we were sort of bound together in a way peculiar to that conference. I don’t always feel that I’m being really bound together with the women, and I felt that a link was being formed that was a very strong bond of the Spirit with these women. Some of them I’ve known since we’ve been coming down, but there was just something the Lord did differently. We had such joy in giving this gift to these women.
(R) Just to put this in perspective, the cost of this conference, the hotel and food, if we had charged these women what it cost it would’ve been more than; well for instance the woman that works for us, it would have cost her more than her weeks salary for her to attend this conference. So that puts it into perspective in terms of the cost of the conference. If someone was going to invite you to a conference in the United States and that conference would cost your weeks salary, you probably would not go, and that made it unaffordable for them al well; and the rural women even more so, this was an amount completely unaffordable to them. So it really was quite a gift, not just the message, but also the accommodations were a gift.
(M) I hope it was a sign that God is a great amazing Giver; I hope it was a sign to them that He wants to bless them, both as you say John spiritually and materially. We’ve done some building and we’ve told you and given you pictures of Christina’s house, and we have a story about that in a moment. But I don’t want us to be a mission that simply builds buildings.
(J) No.
(M) So this is a balance, we’ve supported the pastors, we have given to the poor, and now we have given freely this gift that most of these women would not have attended had it not been free. It is such a joy on our end. I just feel like it’s such an amazing privilege to have the means from givers to do this kind of thing. I wish everybody could be in on the exuberance you feel when you look at these women and know they were so grateful and so receptive, they were just wonderful, and I was quite amazed at many of them, at what they perceived and comprehended and could respond and had their own experiences in their own lives of forgiveness.
(Jean) I think what we gave and what I got was relationship; woman to woman, the tearing down of the wall that North American women are somehow different. We didn’t drop in to their lives to be largess for them, we came with relationship to them, that we are one. And I perceived them very much individually, a number of them in relationship to me. I felt like they were seeing that we’re not set apart from them in any way; we are just like them, they are just like us, with the same pains and heartaches. And that’s what I think we brought to them the relationship, sister to sister.
(M) Woman to woman.
(Jean) Woman to woman.
(M) That’s good Jean, because I really do feel like as it progressed along, we were no different than them.
(Jean) We were not.
(M) And that Sarah represents the tendencies of woman, I took them through Sarah’s failures and stumblings to show, and we would laugh at ourselves that we women all do the same thing, all have the same temptations to control things. (Jean) I felt like that was another part of you stories, when you started telling your personal stories, they were saying, oh, this woman, she struggles with the same kind of issues that I do. I felt like the stories were a breakthrough.
(R) It broke the wall, they really did. The stories broke the wall.
(M) Well I didn’t plan that, you know I didn’t foresee that, but when the Lord brought me there I had to gulp and go ahead and tell what He wanted me to tell. And it was fun, we could all just say oh yes. And you’re right Jean, I hadn’t really seen it, but that’s; to make yourself one of them makes them one of you. And if you come to look down then they will feel inferior. And Jean welcomed these rural women with the biggest, most marvelous love, and there were so many hugs and kisses going on. Mostly it tended to be, as John said it went toward, the strongest part of it was on forgiveness. And it was more than that, these women, the stories that we heard privately would just crush you, of abuse. Most of these women had been victims of abuse from early childhood in one form or another, in every form you can imagine and some you can’t imagine. So I was able to tell them the story of Elsa, and her two sisters were there to hear it, that Elsa, whose Father singled her out for the most horrendous neglect and cruel abuse; gave the other children an education and refused to give her one. But she validated her salvation through the fact that she understood she had to ask forgiveness of those who had abused her. And that is a major shocking point for all of us, that our response to wrongs is the problem. So Elsa went to her Father who never gave her any sign of affection or worth, and asked his forgiveness for her bitterness with him. And his response was, I don’t know why you’re here, I don’t know why you’ve come; it meant nothing to him; but it was obedience on Elsa’s part. And I could use a Honduran woman to illustrate the shocking principal that when you are abused most of your problem is your response, not the abuse itself; and that when you come to take responsibility for your response to the abuse, then you are free. So God moved Elsa to do this, I didn’t teach Elsa to do this, it was Elsa’s God that told her she had to ask her Father’s forgiveness. And she had done this immediately upon her salvation; she got up out of her chair after being born again and went to someone who had offended her and asked his forgiveness for her bitterness, and Rosemary and I looked at each other and said, she’s really born again. And nobody taught her to do these things. So bitterness and pretense are great temptations to these women. They want to have worth, when they have been devastated in their worth. And I think another thing that came in the conference was, I began by giving them Jesus worth as we went to women through all of the women of the New Testament and showed how He went to them first, He appeared to a woman first. And He gave a woman honor that no culture ever had given a woman. So Rosemary you know more about what this would mean to them than I would.
(R) I was touched by the woman’s testimony that was a single mother raising two children, and she had told her daughter who’s a teenager now, that she needed someone that would understand her and someone that would support her and someone that would be there with her. And she just share through her tears how the first night she had really been turned back to understand that Jesus could be all that for her; and that He was all that she needed. She even shared a very vulnerable thing that when she’d shared with her teenage daughter, her daughter had said to her, seek God Mom. That testimony just really touched me, partly because I know the woman and I know the journey that she’s been on and she had a real awakening with the Lord but had kind of walked away from Him. So I really believe the conference brought back to her that Jesus can be everything that she needs.
(M) The first night I think, I remember this because of your Spanish translation, but I emphasized that Sarah hoped in God alone. And you say ‘God alone’ in Spanish.
(R) (Spoken in Spanish) Solamente Dios
(M) Uh-huh. I love that; I couldn’t remember it just then, but someday I’m going to remember that. It’s such a beautiful phrase, and the woman ‘got it’; there’s only God, there’s only God for a woman. In that she’s free and whole. There’s another woman who shared very honestly, her anger with God, He’d given her a Downs Syndrome boy, and then he had a hole in his heart. He was there the whole conference, a very sweet, sweet boy, very precious and I started to say childlike, of course. And she told about her rage, her honest rage with God, and You’ve given me this Downs Syndrome child and now he’s got a hole in his heart. Well the boy was healed right before; and I had emphasized the woman at the well and her naked honesty with Jesus and how Jesus could reveal Himself to her because she was utterly honest. And so the woman could relate to what had happened to her. Many of the things I told they related to their own experiences and they could understand, they came to understand what God had done through that.
