When asked about our 5 most beautiful moments on the Race, my mind went directly to Baba Marfa and I couldn’t shake the thought of her beauty. This woman has a story that deserves to be shared.
Baba Marfa. A beautiful lady. Old, blind, frail, but full of life. One of Ukraine’s most beautiful hidden gems.
We randomly happened upon her during our time in Ukraine. A few days before we arrived at our ministry, she showed up at our ministry site asking for food. One of our close friends in Ukraine, Xander, went to her house to see her situation. He recognized her needs and started going to her house daily to bring her food, wash her clothes, and listen to her as she cried.
One day, Xander asked us to go with him as he helped care for her. He planned on washing her clothes and sheets but he knew he wouldn’t have been able to carry all of them. He told us that we would likely get fleas from helping, but we were welcome to join him. Kirsten, Christiana and I hopped in the car, ready to meet this old lady that had captured Xander’s heart.
We showed up at her little shack and the smell of fire and cooked rice hit me. The walls were mud and sticks. The doors were just slabs of wood held closed by wires. In her house, she had a fireplace, a bed, a small table, and a few benches and shelves. She lived simply and didn’t have anything more than what she needed for survival.
She greeted us with tears and countless kisses on our hands. We didn’t understand a word that she said, but it was obvious that she was overwhelmingly grateful for our presence.
She told us about the hardships that she had encountered during her life. She grew up without parents. She and her siblings had to eat poop just to survive. She was growing up in a time that Ukraine was very oppressed which meant that she never had much money of her own. It was a hard childhood of living just to survive. Xander translated small amounts of her stories to us, but we weren’t able to hear the fullness of all of her stories.
In the places that translation lacked, empathy filled in the cracks. Even when Xander didn’t translate, I still felt like I knew the fullness of her story. Her heart and emotion conveyed something that words would never have been able to. I had never experienced empathy as strongly as I did in that little shack in Ukraine. It felt like I understood the fullness of her story, even when I had no idea what she was saying.
Baba Marfa was blind but she knew her way around her house very well. She had lived by herself for quite a few years so she was able to cook and clean and take care of herself, to some extent, without the use of her eyes.
As we left, we prayed over her. We prayed for hope in the midst of a life that feels endless and we prayed diligently that her sight would be restored.
When we showed up the next day, her spirits were lifted. She asked us to live with her and take care of her. She told us that we could stay in Ukraine and that she would feed us well and we could live in her house with her. She described her house as a beautiful cottage on a river with gorgeous apple trees out front. She said we would be allowed to eat the apples whenever we wanted if we were to stay and take care of her.
When we prayed for sight, we were expecting a physical healing. Instead, the Lord showed us something completely different. The Lord restores Baba Marfa’s vision, but not her sight. He gave her beautiful ideas about her situation. He gave her hope for the future. He took her blindness and turned it into a beautiful gift that allowed her to see beauty, even if it was all imagination.
Baba Marfa was a beautiful human. Getting to see her light in the midst of the cold Ukrainian winter was incredibly heart warming. Meeting her and seeing the Lord’s hand at work was super special. It feels like I’ve left little pieces of my heart with people all over the world. Baba Marfa holds a very special piece of my heart. She’s one of the beautiful people that can’t be forgotten.
