Women's Day 2008
Missing Peace—FOUND! Women’s Day 2008
By Janella Van Zee
On Saturday April 12, the women of the Southwestern International Church of Christ hosted a phenomenal Women’s Day entitled “The Missing Peace.” As the event invitation explained, “Women today have many roles and responsibilities: wife, mother, sister, friend, professional, student, and on and on. Despite how fulfilling these roles can be, deep inside we find it difficult to feel at peace in life. Join us as we explore and discover where all women can find the true source of peace, that missing peace we long for.” And discover we did! Women’s ministry leader, Brenda Salazar said of the event, “I was encouraged because I think it was what we all needed. I believe it met the needs of many women in the church as well as helped us to get outward focused to want to help so many of our friends and family who are looking for God. We tried to keep the focus on God’s Word and not on impressing people with a big production.”
After a great catered lunch, Linda Morales provided musical encouragement with the song “Carry You” by Amy Grant which expresses God’s power to carry us through anything. Ann-Brigitte Taliaferro from San Antonio was the key note speaker and based her lesson from Mark 5:24-29 about the bleeding woman. Said Bernice Madrid from the singles ministry, “Ann-Brigitte's lesson was so packed with inspiration. The thought that ‘peace comes not from the absence of trouble, but from the presence of God’ joined together with the scriptures about faith, left me asking myself: Do I want to be the person who reaches out for Jesus and is healed by my faith, or one of many who merely brushes up against Jesus, and never feels his glory? Also having Delma Aguilar and Paulette Sifford share their personal struggles was very convicting. To ‘accept the trials in life as pure joy’ was such a simple, yet challenging concept that left a permanent imprint on my heart.” God’s glory really did shine during the entire Women’s Day event.
Rachel Martinez from the campus ministry stated, “I feel God was glorified in every aspect of the event. I helped out with the decorations and that morning there was a big accident on the interstate. Coming in from Las Cruces, I wondered if we would get things set up in time and God totally glorified it because when we got into town traffic was moving smoothly, and it took us no time to set up, especially because we had help from a lot of other sisters. Throughout the event it seemed like more and more women kept on coming in and it was totally amazing to see God work. I know for my guest, she saw it as such a relief to hear so many people talk about God freely. She really enjoyed herself. It was so awesome to see so many women enjoying fellowship with one another for quite a long time even after the event. There is much credit that needs to be given to God. He is amazing.” To end out the event, attendees were asked to complete response cards which were used to raffle off door prizes. The women of the church had either personally donated or gotten donations from various businesses for the event and a total of 26 door prizes were raffled off! Prizes included beautiful gift baskets, restaurant and salon gift certificates, and gourmet chocolate. On the response cards many women shared how encouraged they were by the event and many of our guests expressed a desire to pursue true peace through God by doing Bible studies and attending more events hosted by the church.
