I was sitting in the shade drinking water. I had to get out of the sun before I got any redder. I see Jonathan walking towards me.
¨Hey, you want to come with to visit a friend of mine and help translate.¨
¨Sure.¨
We go off to Hilda´s house and Jon fills me in as we walk. He tells me that he and Amanda have been visiting her. She got saved our first week in Lomo and they brought her a Bible. He has been trying to go back and read through it with her, make sure she´s understanding everything.
We knock on her door and she lets us in. We help her with a few chores and then Jon asks if we can share some scriptures with her. She gets out the Bible that Jon had given her before. She says her ten-year-old son has been helping her read through it because she cannot read very well.
She then tells us that she´s a month and a half pregnant and her husband left because he didn´t want to be responsible for another child. She still has a smile on her face and says she knows God is still faithful.
We agree and we start sharing scriptures with her. We read through a few, and she begins talking. She is saying so much so fast. I don´t want to interrupt her to translate so I just let her go and tell Jon I´m sorry.
Half way through, she breaks down. She starts crying and saying she doesn´t know what she´s going to do. She has a baby on the way. She never thought her husband would actually leave. She has no food and she can´t pay for her son to go back to school. She tells us about a miscarriage she had two years ago. She says she´s not going to get prepared for this baby yet because she doesn´t know if it will happen again.
As she cries, I put my hand on her. My eyes are welling up too. When she finishes, Jon grabs her hand and we pray with her. We have to leave right after. We say good-bye and make our way home. Both of us feel like we want to buy her some groceries, so we make plans to do that.
The following week, Jon brings her and her son a huge spread of food. We go back the next day to say good-bye. It´s our last day in Lomo. She invites us in. She is smiling and cooking the food that Jon brought the day before. She is so happy and keeps thanking us. We don´t tell her it´s our last day right away.
Jon shares some more scriptures with her and she highlights them in her new Bible. We then tell her that this is the last time we will see her, and we will not be coming back. I watch as her face changes from happiness to disbelief to sadness.
¨When will you come back again?¨ she asks us.
We tell her we don´t know, but it won´t be for awhile.
She is crying. She tells us that she felt alone before we came, but then when we came to visit her she felt like someone cared about her. She says now she will feel alone again.
We are all heartbroken by this. We pray with her. We pray that God would be with her. We pray that she will feel his presence, that she will know he hasn´t left her. We pray that he will be her husband and father. We then go and get the lady who runs the women´s cell group in Lomo and bring her back to meet Hilda.
It turns out these two women have a lot in common. The cell group leader was abandoned by her husband 21 years ago, left to raise four boys on her own. She tells Hilda that Jesus has been her husband for the last 21 years. It was so encouraging for all of us involved to see the Lord begin that relationship.
We leave Hilda´s after taking a few pictures and saying good-bye. We leave there feeling hopeful.
After a somewhat spiritually dry month for me personally, I know that the Lord allowed me to be involved in this woman´s life for a reason. I got to see that just our presence makes a difference. We don´t have to bring 500 people to Christ. We don´t have to feed an entire community or build 50 houses. Sometimes just our presence, just making the effort to visit someone makes all the difference.
