“The most joyful ‘no’ I’ve ever said”

Passing leadership training into the hands of our brothers and sisters in Christ worldwide is one of our top goals at Entrust. Mo Blackmon celebrated that milestone in March, having said a “no” full of rich meaning.

Mo is Canadian. She served God in Latvia for 20 years. In 2013, having moved back to Canada but still traveling back and forth to her beloved Latvia, she introduced a few key women leaders to Entrust Equipping Women training. Year after year, module after module, those women took the training and passed it along to others. Life transformation and ministry skills spread into second- and third-generation learners from various towns and cities and churches.

The pandemic prevented Mo from traveling and facilitating in Latvia, leading the Latvian team to completely take over the training. As a result, they’ve taken ownership of the entire process, seeking God for their nation-wide strategy, shepherding learners, facilitating modules. All the material in now in Latvian language, and eight Latvian women are now fully trained to facilitate the Equipping Women modules.

The Latvian leadership team planned to offer two more modules over Zoom in the spring of 2022, and asked Mo to serve as lead-facilitator for one of the courses. (Entrust trainings generally feature a lead-facilitator and at least one co-facilitator.) Mo would have loved to serve alongside her sisters, but a few delightful facts came to mind.

Three women — Agnese, Anda and Daila — were equipped and ready to facilitate. They’d completed all the Entrust training and are skilled facilitators.

Beyond that, “Agnese has lead-facilitated this course before and she’s excellent,” Mo says. “For me to take that role over from her would be a step backwards.

“Secondly, if there are qualified Latvians able to facilitate, they should do so, not me. In this way, I am entrusting the ministry of training church leaders to these reliable women, who are qualified to teach others.”

So, with great joy, Mo said “no.”

“They understood and received what I said very well, and then asked me to mentor them through the training, meet with them before, during and after it’s over, as well as looking over their lesson plans, schedule and so on. I heartily agreed and added that I would recruit others to pray for them, for which they were most grateful.”

Nine women from across Latvia took Entrust Equipping Women’s first module, “Facilitating Relational Learning” in March, in Latvian, ably and skillfully guided by Agnese, Anda and Daila. All 12 women grew deeper in their walks with the Lord, gained greater understanding and confidence in shepherding small groups and grew closer to one another as sisters in Christ.

Mo cheered and prayed from Canada, rejoicing in that most joyful “no.”