How to delay successive iterations of a loop in MOAI?

How to delay successive iterations of a loop in MOAI?

I want to delay successive iteration of a loop in MOAI. I've tried using a
timer to delay calling the loop, and putting an empty loop inside my main
loop. In the latter case, it just goes through all iterations of the inner
loop before proceeding to the outer loop. The result is, it stops at the
first iteration of the main loop, then goes through the inner loop, and
then finally executes the the main loop. How do I stop it from happening?