Thursday, August 30, 2012

First Day of Marriage Conference in Mibu

Yesterday (Wed), the first of a two day long marriage conference here in Mibu went very well! As well as the locals, many others came from all the areas where the gospel has spread from Mibu; 7 villages represented in all. Nobody counted, but my guess would be that there were upward of a couple hundred people there!

Sesi opened the day up with an excellent reminder of what we have in Christ, and what that means for how we live our lives here. He brought out the need to love as Christ loved us; a perfect opening for talking about God's plan for marriage. After that Geoff taught about several topics related to marriage:

- Jesus' concern about unity among those who are his and how that is most pointedly shown in the marriage relationship.
- The uniqueness of marriage.
- Things that we do that hurt God's design for marriage.
- How behavior that hurts God's design for marriage effects the rest of our Christian lives.

The men were seriously challenged throughout to consider their responsibility in hurting relationships with their wives. And of course the hope of being able to move past those hurts because of what Christ has done for us was sprinkled throughout.

After the teaching a late lunch was prepared and served by the men... a task usually done by the women here, allowing the women a chance to do what the men usually do while food is being prepared; resting and enjoying each other's company.

In today's (Thurs) meeting we'll be reviewing elements of Ephesians 5 and also talking about the helpfulness of regular acknowledgement of and apologies to your spouse for areas of weakness.

We, as a family, had a great time together yesterday. The kids were really well behaved and fairly easy to manage. Shannon got lots of time with her friends, as did Geoff. It was a good time to just be away from the normal concerns of school and house and to be with our friends.

(In the picture: Overflow seating for the marriage conference. Thankfully the weather was perfect.)

1 comment:

Theresa said...

LOVE this!!! So encouraging. And great to hear that Sesi opened it up. Continuing to pray for amazing things.