Matamoros Marriage Conference
I spent the weekend in Mexico, working with Iglesia Bautista Eliasim, a church-plant in Matamoros that sponsored a marriage conference at the Holiday Inn.
Pictured with me (left) are the pastor, Homer, and his wife, Bettia, and daughter, Cinthia, during the lunch that was provided after the conference.
Octavio and Angelica, my friends who accompanied me, worship in Fort Worth with Homer and Bettia's son. Octavio and Angelica had flown down about a month ago and held a small marriage conference for ten couples. Gary and I had sent some of the Spanish translations of the intimacy book with them. The couples felt the information presented was so life-changing that they started planning a "next time" for their friends--a city-wide conference the following month! Before they even left Matamoros on that trip, Octavio and Angelica emailed me to ask if I would be willing to do a conference for a big group with Angelica translating for me.
When we stepped off the plane in Harlingen last Friday, the couple who met the three of us immediately told us that the pastor had been on the radio in Brownsville (U.S.) and in Matamoros (Mexico), promoting the conference on Spanish-speaking stations. The man who was our driver is a media professional, and he told us we needed to stop by the radio station on the U.S. side to deliver some tickets to the conference to use as give-aways.
When we arrived there and sent the wife inside with the tickets, we sat in the car joking about how funny it would be if they said we had to go on the air--since I don't speak Spanish. Well, don't you know, out the wife came and said exactly that! So Octavio and I did a radio show on marriage on about two minutes' notice.
The station manager turned out to have some mutual friends at SETECA, a seminary in Central America with links to CAM International and DTS (we offer a DMin down there). So the station kept a bunch of the intimacy books and were going to promote them. I think I make about five cents per book--maybe less. But that's not the point. I'm so thrilled God is using stuff I wrote nearly ten years ago in places I don't even know about.
On Saturday morning Octavio taught while Angelica and I sat out in the hall and reviewed everything I planned to say. I didn't count, but I'm told there were about one hundred twenty people there. The pastor, looking out on everyone, told me, "There are more strangers here than church people." The planners were thrilled at the turnout.
After the conference, a businessman threw a spontaneous dinner for the planning committee and the speakers at his home. (We certainly never went hungry.) It was a lovely 60+ degree night, and we ate outside on his covered patio area next to his pool and garden. Seated next to me was a friend that this businessman had invited from his small group--a physician who attended the conference with his wife. Turns out this physician and his wife, who are "seekers," are a urologist/andrologist and therapist. The urologist does 20 percent of his practice in infertility, covering a huge area from south Texas to Central Mexico. Andrology is not a very common area of specialty, and he was fascinated to learn I had a book on infertility available in Spanish. His wife also found this all quite interesting. (No kidding. So did I!)
On Sunday morning before church, Pastor Homer pulled me aside and said he had been reading a copy of the infertility book, and he wanted me to come back in September to do a conference for fertility patients. The andrologist had agreed to send a bunch of his patients.
We were well fed, well cared for, and more importantly felt God was at work and allowed us a glimpse of a part we could play. Many influential people of the city attended.
One of the highlights for me was the woman who came up and hugged me after church. She does not usually attend church, but she came with her husband. She told me with tears in her eyes that they had done their homework (I assigned them to talk about his top needs/her top needs). She said the information at the conference had been important information and that they really needed it. The hope in her eyes said it all.