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With love from the Netherlands
The Women
Leadership Conference in Birmingham
has
just finished and at the moment you think everything has come
to an end, it happens.
Someone
passes you in the hall of the hotel and says you goodbye and
wishes you safe travelling. "Where do you travel to?",
she asks while walking on. "To the Netherlands". Suddenly
this lady turns around, looks at my name tag and then she nearly
squeezes all the air out of me in a big hug while she shouts:
But then you must be the woman who has collected the money to
purchase a computer for Kaa Simon in New Guinea. (Kaa Simon
has made arrangements for the women in her area so they don't
need to give birth in the bush and without any help any longer).
I
am very surprised she knows about this. Before I can ask her
something the woman runs to the reception of the hotel and returns
in the company of another woman. She tells the other woman who
I am and this other lady starts to cry when she hears this.
When they then tell their story it is my turn to cry.
To enable as many Dutch sisters to experience a little bit of
the BWA World Congress and the Women Leadership Conference in
Melbourne Australia in 2000 I have travelled through the country
during the past five years and gave a presentation of these
events.
At
the end of the evening I raised money for the computer for Kaa
Simon and I asked the women to send a picture postcard of the
Netherlands to the sisters in the village of Ronu Max in New
Guinea. I had met Ronu in Melbourne and she had told me that
the women of her women's group had to walk three days through
the jungle to celebrate the Day of Prayer and then walk back
home in three days.
Was
it coincidence that one of the women I now met in the hall of
that hotel had just been to the village of Ronu Max? (By the
way she travelled by a little plane, because she could impossibly
travel for three days through the jungle on foot).
When
she arrived in the house of her host the first thing she was
showed were dozens of picture postcards from the Netherlands.
She noticed the edges of the cards were somewhat worn out and
dingy. It was obvious the cards had gone through many hands.
But
what moved me most was that those women, far away in the jungle
of New Guinea, when they come together for their women's meeting,
put those cards on the table, lay their hands on the cards and
pray for the women in the Netherlands.
It
makes me understand the song; "In Christ there is no east
nor west...".
Was
it coincidence that I met those women when I was about to leave
Birmingham? I look at this event "With New Eyes".
Wies Dijkstra
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