Every week my shepherd takes our team on home visits. This past Wednesday we walked to the homesteads across the field from my care point. We visited the home of Thandiwe an older woman, a mother of nine children. Three who had passed away from sickness. Her husband had left her, and the older children had moved to a town two hours away.
She only had one daughter that still lived with her who attends our care point regularly. They live in a small one room house.
As we sat on a mat in her home our shepherd translated for her as she told us about her new found hope in her savior Jesus. Thandiwe grew up without ever knowing God, but four months prior she found him. Right after her husband left her, and she was starving. She described how Jesus had blessed her with food for them.
Her most prized possession is a worn and tattered Bible that was completely in Siswati. Because she had never gone to school she didn’t know how to read. So she would take her Bible and walk to the church that was several miles from her home daily and have others read her scripture. She told us how she desired to know everything she could about her king.
We then asked if we could pray for her. She asked us to pray for her neighbors that lived close to her homestead that they might find Christ as well. Then she told us her desire that her children would find Jesus and come home to her.
After we prayed over her we showed her this verse.
Luke 15:3-7 So he told them this parable: “What man of you, having a hundred sheep, if he has lost one of them, does he not leave the ninety-nine in the open country, and go after the one that is lost, until finds it? And when he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders, rejoicing. And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and his neighbors, saying to them, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.’ Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.
God will be rejoicing with her when her daughters come home to her, and when they come to know Him. Because he seeks each of his children until they repent and believe in him. And on that day heaven rejoices. At the end of the visit we sang amazing grace to her, the holy spirit filled that small room and we could see so much joy radiating from Thandiwe.
We pass by the field that she works in almost every day on our walk to ministry. When she sees us her face lights up and she stops whatever she is doing and runs to us. Thandiwe has blessed me more than she will ever know. And I feel so humbled to call her a friend and a sister in Christ.
How incredible is it that this woman who has lost so much and has nothing only ask for her neighbors to be saved and her children to come home to her. She didn’t ask for more possessions or a better life only that God would help those around her. When will we choose to be content with what God has already blessed us with? Because he blessed us with more than this women would ever think to ask for.
Thandiwe favorite verse. John 14:1-2 “Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?
