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| Jackie at the machine. |
The space that signals the place to stop looks somehow different. The rusted green slide is gone. Yet the children who come running when I appear are exactly the same. I found three of the Konoweka ladies working on a bedcover in a tiny dirt-floored room. Pieces of orange, purple, and flowered fabric patched into the top of what will eventually be a single size bed cover.
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| Pastor Jessica shows off her boy shirt. |
We enjoy a short time of greeting and fellowship before looking at the 1 Corinthians 13 verses about love. I’m struck by Pastor Jessica’s teaching and consider how the various attributes – knowledge, wisdom, and the like – may not be intended as mutually exclusive but instead, perhaps, conjoined to love. For example, knowledge alone is a weapon. Knowledge with love is an instrument. I think more about all my various qualities or flaws and about how different they might appear when integrated with love.
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| Sarah shows off her first dress. |
The ladies seemed to have made little progress during my absence. Many reasons passed over their lips and I tried to listen and understand. Yet, I chided them a bit for not continuing their practice by taking apart and putting together the same garment until perfected. They complained of needing a workshop to keep the machines in good order. I asked them, though, how having a workshop would change their motivation to practice or to find customers. We discussed the cycle of tailoring, marketing themselves and their products, and the importance of quality. I’ll return in a month to see their progress and to devote an extended time with them, perhaps including a trip to the market for the whole group. Pray with me, please, that they would be motivated, creative, and problem solvers. I don’t want to give up but I need wisdom about how to properly encourage them without throwing money down a hole.