ROBERT PIERCE
• Leader & Times
March is Women’s History Month, and after noticing there were not many opportunities for women’s conferences in a rural area like Southwest Kansas, officials with Liberal’s Trinity Faith Church created just such an opportunity.
“They’re usually in big cities,” TFC’s Sheila Wells said. “It’s hard to get away to go to those, so we thought we would offer something locally for women in the Southwest Kansas area that would give them a chance to participate in something like that.”
Wells is heading up the “Something Beautiful” women’s conference scheduled for March 28 and 29 at Trinity Faith Church, and she said after church leaders thought about doing the conference, they reached out to Christy Miranda-Trahan, the keynote speaker for Friday’s portion of the conference, who Wells said has done other conferences in the area.
As for the conference itself, Wells hopes women will simply see they are valued by God.
“Often, women get caught up in the details of life and the things that keep families moving, and they get dragged down by the stresses of life,” she said. “We wanted women to know God finds beauty in them, and God values them.”
The “Something Beautiful” theme for the conference comes from Ecclesiastes 3:11, a portion of which reads “He has made everything beautiful in its time.”
“We want women to know God values them, and God finds beauty in them,” Wells said. “God creates beauty in them. We hope we can encourage them to come out.”
Saturday’s portion of the conference will feature the day’s keynote speaker, Hugoton Assembly of God Executive Pastor Kristi Singer, as well as some other well known local speakers.
“We have Rhonda Kinser, Lora Jones and Emily Reimer,” Wells said. “Emily is new to this. She is actually the children’s director at Trinity Faith Church, and she’s a recent graduate of Apostolic Faith Bible College.”
Small group sessions and a craft time will also be part of Saturday’s portion of the conference.
“We’re going to make a prayer board,” Wells said. “It has places where you can write down specific prayers for family, for your church, for yourself. As those prayers are answered, you can move those to the board. That’s something they can take home with them.”
The “Something Beautiful” women’s conference starts with registration at 5 p.m. Friday with refreshments before moving onto the night’s worship and the address from Miranda-Trahan.
“Worship will be done by Landry Caldwell from North Harvest Community Church in Follett, Texas,” Wells said. “His team will be doing worship services for us.”
Saturday morning starts with breakfast at 8:30 before moving into worship and small group sessions.
“We’ll break for lunch, and we’ll come back and do some more small groups and our keynote speaker in the afternoon,” Wells said.
There are several ways to register for the conference.
“If women are wanting to register, they can contact the church office here,” Wells said. “The phone number is 620-624-5729, or they can call me at 580-529-1044. There’s also a link on the church Facebook page to Event Brite. They can register online, take care of it all there, and they don’t have to worry about getting a registration form back to us. They can also go to eventbrite.com and type in ‘Something Beautiful,’ and it should come up.”
The speakers and worship leaders come from a wide radius, and Wells said those attending the conference come from a big part of the surrounding area as well.
“We sent out invitations to area churches from Southwest Kansas, the Oklahoma Panhandle and the north Texas Panhandle,” she said. “We covered about a 45-mile radius around Liberal, and we sent out to as many churches as we could. We’ve sent out information to them. It’s been on our Facebook page and our Web site. We’ve contacted KJIL and KSCB as well. We would like to have 100 women show up.”
Wells said both online and in-person registrations have already been seen for the conference.
“We’re hoping we have good success this year,” she said. “This is the first time we’ve ever done anything like this, but if we have a good turnout and there seems to be more interest, we would like to make it an annual thing.”
Wells too hopes women will see value in themselves.
“They would come to know God finds them beautiful, and they are daughters of God,” she said. “They will walk away not only feeling refreshed, but encouraged and with a better sense of their own purpose God has called them to.”
A sense of sisterhood is also part of Well’s hopes for the conference.
“Here in Southwest Kansas and the Oklahoma Panhandle, we all serve the same God, and we all have a connection,” she said. “It doesn’t matter what church we attend. The important thing is we come together as one in learning more about God and serving Him.”
Wells said the conference will serve as a break for women from everyday life.
“It’s a chance to renew and refresh, a chance to step away from all the responsibilities of life just for a few hours, to be around other women who are like minded and encouraging to them,” she said.
Wells praised the work of the Trinity Faith team in putting the conference together from registrations to food to crafts to speakers to worship.
“We are very excited about bringing it all together,” she said. “We’re excited for the event.”
The cost of registration for “Something Beautiful” is $40, and with that price, Wells said participants will get several things.
“That covers both days, and they get a T-shirt,” she said. “They get all of their food. They get a gift bag. We will also have some drawings and prizes we’re giving away.”
