EYN Pastor’s Wives’ Conference, A Joyful Reunion

EYN Pastor’s Wives Conference

by Peggy Faw Gish

The Jos church sanctuary was packed once again, this time with women all in similar yellow-patterned clothing, with “EYN Pastors’ Wives” written on it in Hausa and English, for the annual Pastors’ Wives Annual Conference. Lively chatter filled the hallways and the churchyard during the breaks as hundreds of women milled around reuniting with each other.

“How to Overcome Crisis,” was the theme of the conference and of the bible studies and discussions led by Sister Rebecca Dali.  She looked at many scripture passages that focus on the inevitability of suffering and ways of dealing with it.  Then she applied what was reading to the threat of Boko Haram, with even some practical advice about things a person should take with them if they need to flee immediate threat. When women asked questions about whether we are expected to forgive and try to live again aside of people who wronged them, her answer was an emphatic, “Yes!”

One sister gave an emotional prayer, crying, and calling on God to help us not just focus on the evils of Boko Haram, but to change our own hearts and root out the envy, selfishness, greed, hatred, and other seeds of violence in our lives.

Another woman I greeted told me that she saw friends here she hadn’t seen for a long time. “Because of the disastrous times we’ve been through,” she said, “I didn’t know if some of these friends were still alive or not until we met again here. And that makes this reunion a particularly joyful one!”