- May 8, 2024
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A pitcher of cucumber-infused water sat on each table at AWC International Saturday, Aug. 10.
“As a lady, you should take time to think about the little things that make life special,” Jacqueline Viljoen told a room full of ladies dressed in their best afternoon tea attire. “Take five minutes to slow down and stop in the middle of your day, pour a glass of water — into a fancy glass — put some fruit in it, sip it slowly and think, ‘This is my moment to relax.’ Those five minutes of taking time for yourself will revolutionize your day.”
The words of advice were inspired by her mother, Deborah, who died two years ago this November of ovarian cancer. Together, with her sisters Angelique and Breanna and family friend Cynthia Braden, Viljoen was living out her mother’s legacy through this ladies summer tea.
“My mom, she was well known throughout the communities and throughout the nations when we lived in South Africa,” Angelique Viljoen said. “One of her dreams was to reach out into the community of the ladies — parliament wives or the ladies that own businesses — and we all just come together to encourage them and remind them about etiquette and to always treat yourself well. That was always her dream, so we just picked up on it and carried on with it.”
After their mother died, the sisters got together to form their outreach Deborah’s Season Tea, which puts on afternoon teas seasonally. They based it on what their mother wrote in her journal, everything from how the tables are decorated to the favors given out.
“We had tea at the hospital every day,” Braden said. “We took it up there and it was really neat to have the family together for tea.”
The focus of the summer tea was to remind women to lead purpose driven lives and to work on their inner beauty as well as their outer.
“When there’s not a purpose, then the drive in life to be beautiful or to touch other people’s lives is lost,” said Jacqueline Viljoen. “And so, we dress up but we have no occasion to show up for. So, guess what we end up doing? We stop dressing up. And in life, there’s no party to attend anymore, so we stop preparing ourselves.”
Viljoen emphasized that even though the teas encourage ladies to dress up, what really makes a woman beautiful is her confidence and her inner beauty. Being a Christian woman, Viljoen used to the Biblical story of Esther to illustrate inner beauty.
“The king would bring in all these ladies, and they would spend months preparing themselves before they were introduced to him,” she explained. “Once they were introduced, he would then choose who he wanted to be his wife.”
She went on to explain that Esther was one of the women that went into preparation to meet the king. After all their preparations, on the night the women were to meet the king, they would stop in a big room and pick out jewelry to adorn themselves with.
“When Esther walked out, she just picked up one simple piece of jewelry, and it was a star necklace and she wore that,” Viljoen said. “And when she went in to go meet with the king, the star necklace she chose, she gave it to him as a gift. All of these ladies were all done up, but the king ended up choosing Esther.
“And the story is so beautiful because when you read about it, it’s this young girl who comes and she lost everything she was going to be and put into this situation. But, Ester was beautiful on the inside. It didn’t take extra jewelry, it didn’t take extra fixing to make her beautiful. Her very heart was that she was a giver and out of that heart, she let her beauty show. As much as we can make ourselves beautiful on the outside, our beauty is really found on the inside and our purpose.”
