International Women’s Day 2015: 6 women helping women

Sometimes, before we can believe in ourselves, we need someone who believes in us. Someone who sees our true potential and who cares enough to patiently stand by us and help us along the road to reach it, encouraging us over the potholes of disappointment and doubt we may face on the way. Someone who gives us hope.

For many of our mission workers, encouraging others and helping them to reach their potential is a daily calling. To mark International Women’s Day on 8 March, here are six BMS women who are using their ministries and relationships to empower the women they meet.
 

1. Getting women into business

Having the ability to support your family boosts your confidence. Jutta Cowie has been helping many Haitian women start micro-enterprises that can earn them some real money and teach them a trade. She is encouraging them to help themselves by using their own gifts and abilities. Creative women are making bracelets, macramé sandals, baskets and crochet hats to sell, and are learning budgeting and marketing skills along the way.
 

2. Standing against abuse

Cynthia Chadwell is supporting Nepali women through a weekly fellowship group in Kathmandu. One of the women who attends was being pressured by her family to have an abortion.
 

3. Renewing self-confidence

Syrian refugees who cannot get into the education system and Lebanese children who are struggling at school are being helped by the Learning Support Project, an after-school club that Louise Brown is running at her church in Beirut. The project has transformed the life of one Syrian girl. She had forgotten everything she had learnt at school, which had dented her self-esteem considerably. But by the end of the year at the Learning Support Project, she was able to write Arabic poetry. “You can imagine the transformation that makes in a girl’s self-esteem,” Louise says.
 

4. Helping the desperate

Many of the people Charmaine Trendell meets on the Thai-Burma border are desperately poor. She is giving them hope through her work with BMS partner Compasio. An ill baby girl left by her mother at Compasio’s infant home has been ‘loved to life’ by Charmaine and her colleagues.
 

5. Healing the sick

Church planter Claire-Lise Judkins is building relationships in France which are leading to people becoming Christians and receiving healing from illness. Lucy was on the Alpha course that Claire-Lise and her husband David ran in Calvisson in 2014. Lucy had given her life to God, but was still unsure of her faith. When she complained about chronic kidney pains, Claire-Lise visited her and prayed for healing. Claire-Lise’s prayers had an immediate effect. The pain disappeared – Lucy felt heat and something moving in her back. “God was giving her a sign to encourage her faith and my faith!” says Claire-Lise.
 

6. Training church leaders

Laura-Lee Lovering is part of the team at Nauta Integral Mission Training Centre in Peru, providing training to pastors and church leaders who live along the Amazon. In this short video, Laura shares the difference the training has made to Gisela, who studied alongside her husband Esau.


The work of these six women and all of our BMS workers is helping to encourage and advance women and men around the world. Make a donation to BMS to ensure this vital, life-transforming work continues.



This article first appeared on the website of BMS World Mission and is used with permission  




 
 

BMS World Mission, 05/03/2015