Global skill training projects in each area are quite different. Our 13th project in Brasilia in Northern Brazil is unique. 12 women in a rural area and 12 in an urban setting. Their challenges were different, their needs were the same. A skill to equip them to be financially independent in their location:  self-sufficient.   Poverty brings many risks not to just them but their children.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In this area, tailoring clothing is not financially feasible as there are inexpensive sources for clothing.  Given the availability to sell home accessories in bazars, they learned to make decorative pillows, table clothes, pet fashions, children’s fashions and even ladies underwear.

 

Skill training also includes sessions on entrepreneurship, pricing their creations, market research, and social media presentations. This is valuable as they creatively complete new ideas.

 

As is often the case in our training projects, the women support and encourage each other.  The bonds they build through these months together strengthen them and push back the loneliness most experience.

 

Our partner, Marli Spieker expanded our component of Bible study.  They used my Not Alone stories of widows in Scripture as their basis.  Inspiring indeed. The spiritual and emotional growth was evident. In their own words, they expressed that this experience shed ‘hope and light into their dark lives.’  We are living out James 1:27 in Brazil.

 

Remembering back to our first project in Mukhotwene Village in Mozambique: so many challenges, so many ‘only God’ moments.  The first trainer had to be replaced, a rugged beginning at every level.  Yet, no electricity, sleeping in a hut with strange sounds in the thatched roof, I’d do it all again.

 

Stepping out of my hut to go to the ‘outhouse,’ which is truly that, I looked up at the darkest blackest sky I had ever seen. Given no electricity for miles around, there was no ambient light anywhere.  Blackest sky imaginable.  And yet.

Stars began to twinkle.  Brighter than I had ever seen, or have since. I contemplated God’s creation.  He created each star differently.  Different gases hydrogen and helium. No two are identical.

 

Scripture states that we are God’s stars, His unique creation Psalm 139: 13—16.  Both unique, no two alike.

 

Recognition, when our surroundings are the blackest, we can and must be shining brightly.

 

While the places I serve globally are often dark in terms of God’s presence and influence, that is true in my own country today.  One widow’s life who now knows that God loves her, 13 unique locations.  Her children watch. So do her neighbors.  In Mukhotwene Village, even government officials came to the graduation.

From that dark night in Mukhotwene to Brasilia, their words, the project has brought them the ‘joy of being alive again.’