Women’s conference 2008

This year’s conference took place at the Christian center about 1,5 hours from Moscow on the 15^th trough 17^th of February. It is always a blessing to set aside all the worries, concerns, business and even thoughts to let the Lord to fill this time fully with Himself, to let Him work and soften your heart and speak gently His words. This year’s theme was the “Vessels of Honor” from Ephesians 2:10 and one of the ladies, Darlene, who came with an American team did an incredible performance and teaching on this subject, she illustrated the relationship between Creator and the creation, on the potters wheel. You can see a video of the part of this performance here.

Darlene's Work
As we were watching, the Lord spoke to many of us: just as the potter’s hands are always holding the clay, shaping and molding it according his design, adding water so the clay would not get too dry, but just enough so it would not get too damp and become useless. Just as he applies strength to push out the clay from the inside and to form it on the outside, but just enough so the vessel would not brake, and at the same time would yield to the patter’s plan. So the Lord works in our lives, holding us close in His hands and shaping us in to His Son’s image. It was a beautiful picture of our Father’s love.
This process of making a vessel and then letting it to wait and dry for some time, just to continue to work on it, reminded me of another teaching on the passage from 2 Timothy 2:20-21. It says: “But in a great house there are not only vessels of gold and silver, but also of wood and clay, some for honor and some for dishonor. Therefore if anyone cleanses himself from the latter, he will be a vessel for honor, sanctified (or set apart) and useful for the Master, prepared for every good work.”
How to become a vessel of honor, a vessel made of gold or silver, if you are a vessel of wood and clay, is it something that is possible to change?
If you try to do something with wood and clay to make it gold and silver, you will fail, because there are no natural ways to change wood into gold or clay into silver, but it has to be Supernatural, something that only God can do and we can ask Him for it. The closer we are to Him, the more we can be like Him and to honor Him with our lives. It is His desire for us to become the vessels of honor and He will do it if our hearts desire to honor Him.
Besides the time of teaching, we had a very special time of prayer, fellowship and fun. First, about prayer – one of the churches from Moscow region prepared a special room for prayer time using prayer stations, where people could come in and pray about different things and needs. I really loved it, because it was time of quite and sweet fellowship with the Lord. You can see some pictures of the prayer stations and more on our picture site just click here.
The time of fellowship was also very special; we had a talent show and a time for making different crafts. It was fun, it was great and it was edifying. I will not write much about it, but let you see for yourselves.

Talent Show - horse race

Talent Show - song

Oh, one more thing, all of us Russian ladies received beautiful gifts from our American sisters. Well conference is already a huge gift for us, but as an addition, we got very nice, worm, pretty, sweet and girly gifts:-) - sleepers, which were a great blessing and very fitting for the pajamas we got at the last year’s conference.
So I would like to thank all of you who took time and prayed for this conference and also to thank the American team ladies, who blessed us so much by giving their love, their time and much, much more to come to Russia and to minister to their sisters here. Natasha