FIELD CONFERENCES.........................................

Since their beginning, it has always been a rule on  Alliance mission fields that there should be an annual field conference.  I remember them from childhood and for me they were fun.  But for our parents it was sometimes an ordeal to get through.  When I was a kid, conference was fun - a time when we got together with other MK's and hung out, played games, etc., while our parents hammered out the rules of the mission on the conference floor.

On practially every Alliance mission field today, conference is still a must. But they call it Field Forum. Usually these are held in a hotel or resort where everything - including meals - is provided. What a far cry from those earlier days!  One single bed was provided per couple, so if the other person wanted to sleep, it was either the floor or bring along another bed. Beds were not provided for children either. So add one more bed to the personal conference equipment. 

I guess we had one conference in Kankan after our family got to Africa, and we haad you two girls, Debbi and Cheryl.  So we took along a bed for Dad and beds for you. Sheets, etc, for everyone.  But at least they did provide food. We had a couple of African cooks, but they could not do all the work for cooking for a hundred and fifty people, so each missionary was given a job. Dad had a five am detail to help cut up the meat for the day. I helped set up the dining room and kept track of you girls who usually had a great time with the other kids.  We ate in a large screened dining room. This dining room had a foundation and a roof, but no walls only screens.  It was a nice looking building,  surrounded by colorful bushes planted every few feet. One day we adults were still sitting at the dining tables - most of you kids had run out to play. Debbie Pease stopped playing tag a few minutes to relieve herself. Seeing a large colored bush, she went behind it, pulled down her panties to go. (In full view of that part of the dining room since the dining room screen wall was behind the bush!)  One of the Peases hurried out to take care of her needs and we all got a good laugh!

We always had a choir at those conferences and I sang in it that year. Which meant long hours of practice so Dad had to watch out for you kids. By the time we got up to sing, everyone had heard us practice the song a dozen times!  Dad wondered if the director thought we were singing in Carnnegie Hall!

After conference we had the trip home to Bobo, not a paved kilometer the whole trip of two days!  We were all thankful this ordeal only occurred once a year. But after that first year, our field had split off, as did Ivory Coast.  So Kankan, Guinea, had all those vast facilities and very few missionaries to use them. French West Africa became Guinea, Mali-Upper Volta and Ivory Coast. So we now had three conference. Later on the Mali separated form the Burkina, at the time of the local wars, so the one big field became four entities and ran our own affairs and had our own conferences.

You girls used to love to watch old Uncle Bowman sing - that was in Kankan. He had a nice tenor voice, but with a fairly wide vibrato and his head shook up and down whenever he sang!  You girls were fascinated with watching him!  I remember as a young girl how we kids used to love to slip into the back of the chapel during conference discussions and listen to all of the debates. We had a few people who were able to express themselves quite vociferously and we loved it.  But usually an adult would see us gathered in the back snickering and would chase us out to play! 

Ah yes, conference.... When we moved our conference to Bobo, we met in the old chapel on the corner, open windows and doors, loud traffic rushing by, so noisy - and oh, so hot!  We had to rent a number of rooms in town to accommodate everyone, and the ones we found were upstairs, a short walk from the mission.  When Dad was director, he was busy in the office before conference and so no time to help set up conference arrangements. Aunt Mary Kaye Pease came early every year to tune the piano which took her a while.  So it fell to Uncle Bob Pease and me to set up conference accomodations in the rooms uptown. Each room had to have beds, a stove or two burner plate, dishes, pots and pans, etc., etc.  People brought their own linens. We also used the guest rooms on the compound which were already set up. Conference was a busy time as we had morning, afternoon and evening meetings - and had to cook for our families as well. We held those conferences in December just before you kids came home from school.  We usually had a speaker from the States for devotions each day.

Some strange things happened during some of those conference sessions. One single woman began to act strange - she had had a way back history of some mental difficulties, and she went off during conference.  We all tried to help her, but she needed professional help in the States, so one of the missionary men was asked to take her on the plane back to the States.  He told us afterwards of the trip - at one point she asked to go to the bathroom and he had to let go alone. She had a little bag with her, and when she came back to where he was seated, she was dressed in filmy pink babydoll pajamas!  He was sure glad to get her delivered to her family in the States. One of our missionary men also had a mental problem which hit him during conference - it happened after we had all gone to bed and were wakened by the noise. His wife was trying to control him in their room, but she could not, and he ran out of the room and leaped over a wall back of the motel. Another man saw him and leaped right after him and chased him down the road and brought him back. He had to be restrained for a while and the men had to take turns sitting with him in another guest room the rest of our conference time.  We always went out to a restaurant one evening during conference to have a relaxed social time, with no meeting. 

Each year we had a speaker from the States and that was refreshing spiritually to have someone come in to speak to us from the outside.  Eventually Paul and Jeanie Bubna were assigned to our field as pastoral couple and they were such a blessing. By then you were married, Elin, and so your in-laws always asked for some time to just visit with us before conference when they came. We enjoyed so much those visits. It was during one of their trips to Africa that my dear friend Jeanne began her sickness which incapacitated her and ended her life sooner than we would have liked.  She was a great lady and a great friend to me. We were blessed to know them both.  Paul always had such wisdom in situations our mission faced and we all appreciated him.

Once the Alliance had missionaries in Ouagadougou, we began exploring possibilities for having conference in that city.  We started out at the SIL guest quarters, which were very basic but clean. They served meals also and had meeting rooms, and so we met there each year for conference.  The younger children all had a nice yard where they could play, and our meeting rooms were adequate.  As seems to be the case, missions seem to move upward and so we graduated to living in a hotel, with meals provided, but by that time we had retired from the field. 

Conferences were a time for business and committee work, but they were also an occasion for corporate worship in English and a time for socializing.  We always had a fun night which took different forms. When we had a missionary retiring, we arranged all kinds of speeches and skits to send them off.  These occasions were both poignant and fun.  Sometimes there were heated debates over an issue on the floor. Each missionary and ministry gave a report of work accomplished. A new field committee was voted into place at conference and sometimes a new field director. 

Interesting how language and terminology change over the years. What we used to call "conference" has now become "field forum";  what used to be "executive committee" is now "FLT - field leadership committee";  and the "chairman" has now become the "field director".  Vocabulary may change but some things remain the same. Gathering together occasionally is good for a team and the annual meeting will probably continue as long as missions in their present form last.  The church has taken over many things that we used to have to do as mission, and so field forums today tend to have more discussion and fellowshhip and less making of mission rules,  it is a time for fellowship and being challenged to minister well in the year ahead. We used to ask the church to assign a couple of their pastors to attend our conferences so that they did not wonder what we were doing for that week each year. Cooperating with the local churches should always be the goal of mission.  It is their country and their church - not ours.