11/18/10
So if you read my last blog, I mentioned going to see if I could help in the garden. Well I did. I mostly just lugged around the largest watering can I have ever seen and watered the tomato plants. They should have mentioned that I needed muscles for this that I was obviously born without. A close thing to watching someone heal, is watching something grow. I also liked walking in the dirt and mud. I just said a prayer that the water was working so I could shower afterwards. It’s common around here for the water to go out. I worked in the garden with two women and that was the best part. They giggled about almost everything I said, because they didn’t understand it. Somehow we all still understood enough. They are really sweet.
As soon as I finished washing up from the shower, Cassie comes into the room and says, “We have been at Rigaberto’s house and he just died. His family wants us all to come back and pray for him. Let’s go raise him from the dead.” A lot of thoughts are going through my head at this point. First of all everything just sounds crazy. Rigaberto was this 26 year old man that we had all seen a couple days before. I had heard he had low blood pressure and he said he felt pressure in his chest. He was pale and tired, but I didn’t think that close to death. I told him to drink a lot of water and we prayed with him. That’s really all I could do. He had been to the hospital the day before and they pretty much just gave him a nebulizer and sent him home. Allan, Cassie, and Alex were there in his house praying with him and his family when he died.
The whole team ended up going back to his house. When we finally get back, Rigaberto was already in a wood box, dressed in his nice clothes, with cotton is in his mouth and nose. Anyone in the village can come to a Nicaraguan wake. You don’t even really have to know the deceased. I think this is one reason why we were so welcomed into their home. There had to be at least one hundred people gathered and everyone was drinking coffee, even the little children, and eating bread. They do this all night.
We walk in and my team all just look at each other for a moment. There isn’t really a WR handbook on what to do next and we have never prayed over a dead person as a team before. I believe God can do anything and want to be open for that, but at the same time I’m thinking that this person is dead. We all laid our hands on him and Allan started to pray and then we all did. Everyone was praying for different things. It sounds crazy to even pray for someone to be raised from the dead, but this happened. It didn’t happen with Rigaberto, but it happened in the Bible. It happened to Rosa’s daughter. She was dead for almost four hours and I just said hello to her last night in youth group. I’ve heard other stories. Things that I have no idea how to explain, but I believe they happened. These people are not crazy. They are in love with Jesus and they believe. They believe that He even has the power to raise someone from the dead. Maybe one reason why we don’t hear or see so much of this in North America is because we have a lot of trouble believing that it is even possible. I know I do. I mostly just prayed that we would all feel at peace with whatever God’s plan was and that the family was comforted. I felt sadness, but also honored that the family just allowed us to be there and asked us to pray. Cassie also invited the family to church.
No matter what this team is going through, we always find humor in something. Even at a wake, we were laughing over a drunk man that was doing what appeared to be yoga poses for us and my having to inconspicuously water the plants with that awful coffee that even the small children were drinking.
We have still been visiting houses and just getting to know people and pray for them. We still mostly go with Rosa. She knows all the sick people. I’ve seen many sick people. One woman had surgery the day before to have her gallbladder removed. I looked at her dressing and her family gladly showed us the stones which they gave her to keep. One women we visited was between 100 and 113 depending on who you asked. She told us 113, but I’m not so sure. Besides her head hurting, she was in the best health of them all. Her name is Anna Maria and she is a cute little thing with her grey braids and wrinkled face. She loved to just hold Christy’s hand and marvel that it was so white and bigger then hers. She asked for a song. Who can really refuse a woman who is over 100 years old? I sang a song called, “Generations” to her and explained that it was about passing on good things to our future generations. I’m sure she has passed on many good things. Everything you try to give her, she tries to give us back. Even when we pray for her, she then wants to pray for us. Saturday is her birthday and we are making her rice pudding. She made sure to show us that she had no teeth. This was not a surprise to us. She even asked Christy to put her Vicks VapoRub on her head and up her nose. Yes up her nose and Christy did as asked. J They seem to think that Vicks can heal any number of things.
“People who are obsessed with Jesus do not consider service a burden. Obsessed people take joy in loving God by loving His people (Matt. 13:44; John 15:8).” Sometimes this even means putting Vicks up someone’s nose when asked. Good job Christy!
