I found true joy. She’s a beautiful woman who lives in a house on a mountainside in Lesotho. Here’s the journal entry I wrote the night I met her.
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Yesterday’s time in our village was simply amazing. I feel like we are gaining ground quickly there and it is a great feeling! Tabo, our translator and new bestie, always knows right where to go. I asked him how he chooses our paths and destinations and he said, “I think the Holy Spirit tells me.” I completely agree and fully believe that. So following our morning “commute” across the field, through the dried riverbed, and up the cliff, we continued our uphill trek. We climbed up another dried riverbed, and were all huffing and puffing before we reached the top! When we reached the top, a whole new section of Makhoseng appeared. As usual, Tabo just knew where to go.
We headed to a house where a middle-aged married couple was sitting on stumps in their yard, enjoying breakfast together. They were so shocked to have four white girls suddenly sitting on the ground across from them that they could not stop laughing. Eventually the husband got up and escaped, but his wife was so humored by us that she sat there on her stump and told us all kinds of things about herself. After anything she said, she laughed uncontrollably, and had the rest of us laughing with her. At one point, Tabo looked at me and said, “I do not know what is going on with this sister.”
I knew, though. I saw the light in her eyes and the hope in her smile that was missing from the lifeless gazes of some others we had spoken to.
She had the joy of the Lord.
Hayley asked her if we could help with anything around her home, and she lapped that offer right up! She took us into her house which was way nicer than most in the village. We entered her emerald green kitchen and complimented her sweet butter yellow cabinets. She told us that she wanted our help with sweeping, dishwashing, and making bread. While we were kneading the dough, we asked her if she had ever heard of Jesus referring to Himself as the bread of life. She said no and asked us to read it to her from the Bible.
Once we had, the Bible remained on the table.
In the meantime, I took a fun picture of her standing in her kitchen as she threw her head back in laughter. We decided to call her “Joy” since we couldn’t pronounce her Sesotho name, and also because it seemed to suit her best. We asked her where her joy came from, and she said it was how God made her. Once the bread was sitting to rise, she came back to the Bible and began reading it slowly in English. Then she flipped to Luke 10:1-12 and asked Anna to read it out loud to us while she stood there smiling and nodding in agreement.
It’s the passage when Jesus commissions believers to go out into the villages around them in simplicity to do His work. He talks about entering the homes of those who receive you. After it was read, we told her, “This is you.”
She kept smiling and nodding, as if to say, “Yep, I know.”
It was an overwhelmingly beautiful moment. Jourdan started crying, then I did too, because it was totally a full circle, World Race moment.
Later when the dishes were done, we asked her to sing us her favorite song. As she sang, a sweet and tangible joy filled the room and we all started dancing. The clean dishes were still sitting on the table, so they quickly became our instruments. Jourdan took a spoon and tapped it on the side of the aluminum kettle. Hayley played the spoons while Tabo and Anna made beats on the tabletop. I grabbed two mugs to hit together. Joy kept on singing as we all laughed, danced, and played our “instruments.”
This Race has given me so many moments, and this one is one that I will always, always cherish. If there is one chunk of time that I could relive whenever I want during my entire life, it would be this morning with Joy. When I’m an old woman, I want to be able to close my eyes and remember in full being 26, in a kitchen banging tin mugs together with sore cheeks from smiling too much.
It feels like the second half of this Race is going to be overwhelming in the most amazing way possible. Up to this month, I’ve done great things, met people who have changed me, and grown a lot in my trust and confidence in Jesus. It seems like a firm foundation has been laid and now all the personalized, hand-selected details will be installed, and by November, I’ll be a completely renovated, soundly built home that houses Jesus. Maybe that’s a cheesy analogy, but it’s true! I’m so excited to collect and live in more surreal and blessed moments.
