Like every year the executive committee held its meeting. Usually we do this in one of the countries of our member unions, but this year we chose to meet at Cyprus. This had of course a special reason.

Probably you know that since a few years we try to organise smaller conferences besides our big European Conference. In this way we have had a conference for New and Young Leaders and a regional conference for women from the countries around the Balkan.

These both were wonderful experiences. That is why we took up the challenge to invite women from the Middle Eastern countries for another regional conference.

To avoid visa problems we chose to have this conference at Cyprus, where we were hosted at the centre of the Middle Eastern Reformed Federation. It was a wonderful place and Rev. Victor Atallah and his wife Lisa made us feel more than welcome and offered us their help in many ways.

The EBWU executive committee in Larnaca, Cyprus

As a committee we started with our usual meeting. All officers reported on their activities of the past year. The report of our president Ewa concerning her travels was as always very interesting. She tries to meet with as many sisters as possible within our union.

The report of our treasurer Elisabeth is also very important because we'd like to make good use of the money raised by all of you. Of course we pay our share for the BWA Women's Department, but with the other part we try to assist in special projects in our continent on request of some of our member unions. And of course we need money for conferences and meetings like the ones I mentioned. Since we have two this year; the Middle Eastern Conference and the BWA Women Leadership Conference in Birmingham a big part of our money will be used for scholarships.

Then we also had reports like on our magazine, News & Views, by its editor, Aniko. This is a wonderful means of communication to inform the sisters in Europe about the experiences and plans you have within your unions. More modern is our website, which concept is valued and which we experience as a challenge for enlarging the contact we can have with each other.

Several of the committee have had contact with you as unions. We still have the wish to do this in better ways then we do now and are looking for this and discussing this during our meeting.

Also some news from the BWA and the EBF was shared. We always realise we are part of this bigger fellowship of Baptist men and women.

Prayer is an important part of our meeting. We have many things to be grateful for and many things to bring before our God. We very often feel unable to do this work within the EBWU and really need the help of God to do this. It is a wonderful, but big task and all of us feel that without God's help, it is an impossible task.

We also realise we need each other to be able to do this work and only in this way we can do this work for Him. This theme we also used for the Middle Eastern conference which followed our meeting: 'Working for Christ together'.

Once again we experienced that in Christ there is no east nor west. We could all recognise each other as sisters and workers together for Him. Seven countries we'd invited, from five a group of women came together to share, to learn, to experience, to worship, sing and pray and get to know each other. Sisters from Egypt, Iraq, Israel, Jordan and Lebanon were present. Hopefully another time also the women from Syria and Turkey can be present as well.

	Participants of the Middle Eastern Women Conference

We were grateful for those who could be present. It was special to be able to meet two young women from the Baptist church in Iraq and to hear from them how God is working in their country. But also in the other countries the women feel that in whatever situation they or their country is in, God has been with them in the past and will be in the future. The testimony of our blind sister from Lebanon was very moving and inspiring too.

Personally for me as a western woman, who has never experienced any war, the stories from all these women are moving and impressive. They make me more aware and grateful for what I have. But to be honest too, I sometimes envy their big faith and trust in God in difficult situations. I am very grateful that I could be part of this conference. To experience this great sense of unity we can only have because of God's great love for us. And the possibility as well as the challenge we are given to be working for Christ together.

Janny Kingma, EBWU secretary

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