One Day in the Lord's Presence Changes Everything

Most conference promos hand you a line-up and a ticket price and call it a day. Melinda Roodt handed us a lounge carpet.

She was a guest on Joyful Journey Home this week to talk about Arise Women's Conference 2026, and the theme alone tells you where she was going: one day in the Lord's presence changes everything. Then she got specific, and that is where the interview stopped being a promo.

The night on the lounge carpet

Melinda grew up feeling like an orphan. Her parents divorced, she felt neglected, and she carried a poor image of herself and a long struggle with who she actually was. Years later, with her husband and children asleep and a hard season pressing in on her, she hit a hunger she could not talk herself out of. It is the same hunger Psalm 84 opens with, a soul that longs for the courts of the Lord.

She put on worship music and broke down on the carpet in her lounge. The room filled with God's presence, and she says she felt him lift her onto his lap the way a father would.

In one moment, He restored my identity. I stood up from there knowing that I'm loved by the Father.

That is the whole claim of the conference, and she does not dress it up. We get defined by what we go through, she told us, and that was never God's heart for any of us. Years of hardship had shaped her view of herself. One moment in his presence rewrote it. She is just as clear that becoming the woman God has called you to be is not instant. Even the Proverbs 31 woman, she told us, is a daily becoming.

Who the day is actually for

Everyone, and she meant it more widely than a church invitation usually does. The tired. The ones who feel dry and have nothing left to give. Women who feel bound and cannot work out how to let go of what holds them. Women fighting addictions, women who feel neglected, women who feel abused. Her message to all of them was the same: there is freedom in his presence, and it is a place where you can be set free from your sin and from your past.

The joyful are welcome too. She said they should come to be refilled so they can carry Jesus to a lost world, which is a better reason to attend a conference than most.

She also pushed back on the excuse we all use. Conferences cost time, and time is exactly what women are short of. Melinda's answer was to buy it out. A day set aside to be refreshed is an investment in your life, she said, and the right moment in his presence can be the one that changes you.

Kim Ballentine, who could not speak

The guest speaker is Kim, who lost her voice when her children were small and could not speak for many years. She had to build a new life without it. God healed her, and she now travels the world telling that story. She speaks in two of the sessions, and the second is on how to keep standing once you have come through the valley of weeping, the picture from Psalm 84 where God turns the dry valley into a place of springs.

Melinda's reasoning for coming to hear her is simple and, honestly, hard to argue with: when somebody shares a testimony, it says that if God did it for her, he can do it for you.

How the day runs

Registration is from 8am to 9am, and every woman gets a gift when she signs in. The first session opens with prize giveaways, testimonies from women, and worship before Kim speaks. Then comes tea, coffee and cake, and Melinda was cheerfully clear about that one: as women, there is always cake. After the break there is more worship, more prizes, and testimonies from two women in the local church about what God did in a single day of their lives. Kim speaks again, and ministry time follows, where anyone who needs prayer will be prayed for.

The women then share lunch together, and after lunch there is another stretch of praise and worship. Melinda takes the final session herself, on Psalm 84, on the Lord as sun and shield who gives grace, favour and honour and withholds no good thing. The day wraps up between 3pm and 4pm.

Bring everyone

Carlett closed the interview with the invitation: bring a sister, bring a friend, bring a mother, bring everyone you want to bless. She joked that if you wanted to bring your goldfish it would be free, then took it back. The point stood, though. Bring everyone. We will be at the conference too, so come and find the JustGospel team and say hello.

Tickets are R250 on Quicket, and that covers the gift, coffee, a snack and lunch.

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