Molly in Africa

Friday, March 06, 2009

International Women's Day of Prayer

I started this day with being the prayer leader for morning assembly at MIRACLE.  This means that after the student group assigned for the day leads us all in at least one if not two songs of praise, then it is time for the assigned student or staff member to read from the Bible and share a little from that.  While I have led prayer during our morning staff meetings, this was my first time leading prayer for the whole school and I had no idea I was going to be so intimidated by that.  I read from 1 Romans 12 about the many parts that all belong in the body of Christ.  It went well and throughout the day I've been complimented on the "good sharing" I did this morning. :)

From 10:30-12:30 today, all of the women on our school's campus (both students and staff) walked over to the Chapel at Chaminade (about fifty feet from my house) to celebrate the fact that today is the International Women's Day of Prayer.  Only women were in the church, so everything was led, read and sung by women which was pretty neat.  I sat near the back and, while I understood very little since it was all in Chitumbuka, I really appreciated watching the rest of the women participating.  It was encouraging, exciting and just fun to see all of these women praying and praising together and feeling free to participate and lead!  In a culture where women are constantly told by societal norms that they are not worthy, it was a really fun two hours to get to watch all of these women bask in their worthiness.  Watching women preach and get the rest excited and engaged, hearing women just belt out the verses to songs and watching the joyful dancing during the songs makes me smile even now- hours later.

If any of you celebrated international women's day of prayer, let me know how you did it!

I'm going to try to update about every two weeks from now on, so hopefully you'll hear from me again later this month!  I hope you all have a wonderful weekend and enjoy the beginning of March!