On the last Friday of our month in El Salvador, the contacts
that were in charge of four of our six groups teamed together to make a final
send off service for our squad.
After our service, we had a little bit of down time before the regular
Friday night church service at 5:30pm.
I was standing outside the church (which was probably about
95 degrees inside) just watching the goings-on of San Vicente, El
Salvador. I stood near Casey and
some others who were waiting to go into the church. As I watched, I saw an elderly woman walk by across the
street. She was very old, small,
and hunched over, with gray hair pulled into a knot low on her head. She wore a worn black and white dress
with a dirty white apron over it.
She had no shoes.
Her feet were so dirty I could see her skin color slowly
fade from a normal nude below her knees to the light brown of dust down toward
her feet. She was slowly hobbling
down the cobblestone street.
I turned to Casey and said, “She has no shoes. That woman, she isn’t wearing shoes.�
Casey looked down and saw her feet. She suggested that we go talk to the
woman and give her Casey’s flip-flops.
We walked over to her and found out her name was
Cornelia. She had stopped at the
entrance of a gated area and was turning the key when we got to her. She was
very hard of hearing and through my rocky Spanish I attempted to tell her that we
wanted to give her shoes. The
message came across when Casey took of her flip-flop and put it in front of
her. With more effort than should
be necessary, she slipped her foot into Casey’s gold plastic flip flop. It was too big. My shoes were also too big; she would
have stepped right out of them.
I told her that we were going to go buy her shoes. I asked if she lived behind the gate,
and she said she did, at the house of Manuel. So Casey and I rushed away to find her some shoes. We got directions to the supermarket
(this was our first time in San Vicente) and found a section of flip flops and
slippers. We weren’t sure what size
to get, so we decided to get one pair of each, and one pair slightly larger
than the other. The slipper and
the flip-flops together cost $4. I
also grabbed a bag of apples for them and we rushed back.
By the time we got to the gate she had been inside for a
while and was nowhere in sight. We
knocked and looked around, but no one seemed to be there to let us in. One of our contacts, Jenny, came over
to help us. Still no response.
A minute later a woman showed up and said she had a key. Jenny told her that we had seen a woman
without shoes and we bought her some and wanted to give them to her. The woman let us into the gate. Because Jenny had to translate for the
church service that was now beginning, Suzy came with Casey and I through the
gated area to look for Cornelia.
Cornelia lives in a safe gated area, but she has no
shoes. These two facts didn’t seem
to align in my mind, and I didn’t know what would be behind the gate. When we went through we saw remnants of
tin and concrete block homes along a wide dirt road about 100 meters long. There were no people. After walking down a slight hill and
turning toward the left, we finally saw Cornelia and her husband, Manual,
sitting in their humble abode.
The four of us, Casey, Suzy, Ilda (the woman who unlocked
the gate for us) and I walked up to Cornelia. Suzy told her that we had brought her shoes. We took out the slippers and the three
of us crouched down to put them on her feet. It was so humbling, fitting two dollar pink and black
checkered slippers on the feet of an 89-year-old woman that had NO shoes. None. I can’t imagine what she has seen, what she has experienced,
the wisdom that she must have. But
she had no shoes. She could not afford the $2 to buy a pair of shoes.
It only takes me about three seconds to slip a pair of
slippers on my bare feet, but it took much longer for the three of us to slip
the shoes onto her dirty and slightly mangled feet. The Salvadoran stone, rock, and dirt streets had not been
kind to her, and I remember that two of her toes on her right foot stuck out at
a strange angle. When the shoes
were on she leaned against a table and looked at us. Her husband, who had been watching from his chair about ten feet
away, said, “Now she’ll be walking on air.�
We visited with Cornelia and Manuel for a little while. We found out that she is 89 and he is
99, and they have been together for 7 years. Manuel was married before and Ilda is his daughter. When he became single again
(I’m not sure why) he found Cornelia. She has a lot of back pain so we prayed for her back and for God’s
provision for the two of them.
Eventually our words ran out, but we didn’t want to leave them. We finally did, and they thanked us for
visiting them. Apparently Cornelia
doesn’t leave the house that often, so the fact that we saw her walking down
the street that day was genuinely remarkable. A divine appointment.
*Support update- I need $1000 by April 1! Please help! Thank you! <3
