Beginning of the conference

On Day 1 of the conference, each of the three speakers felt sick. Bob improved quickly, but Emmanuel and I continued to feel ill throughout the day, and even into the next. When all illness lifted at the end of the last conference day, it became clear to us that this was a spiritual battle that we were facing.



We arrived to a dishearteningly empty church. Pastors trickled in slowly right up to lunch time at 1:00pm. Bob opened the conference talking about “A Perfect Heart.” It was said more than twice during the weekend, that “If our hearts are hard, we shouldn’t be surprised that the ground outside remains hard. If we let God soften our hearts, perhaps He would send rain to bless the crops.” This is January just south of the equator. Normally, rain and sun would have brought the crops near harvest by now. Instead, there had been clouds without rain. The crops planted many weeks previous stunted or failed.



Without steady precipitation, the community faces real hardship ahead. This dryness is unusual for a valley that enjoys nearby mountain weather.