Among all the other things my team and I did in Binga, we also did a house visit to a family that Hope Zimbabwe is sponsoring.
On the day of our first home visit, my team and I pulled up to a family’s home where we ended up praying over the family. We opened our eyes to an older blind woman who was standing near us. She asked if we could come pray blessings over her house. So naturally, we follow this woman to her compound to pray for her and her house. She lives in this little hut that could barely fit three people. It’s a hut with walls made of sticks and mud and a roof made of straw.
My teammate Caleb, had the desire to ask if we can pray for healing over the woman’s sight. She says yes, we pray, and nothing happens.
We then move onto praying for her house. This woman then tells us that her roof has holes and leaks when it rains. She then asked us to pray over the leaks as well. We circle her house and begin to pray. As I’m praying for her house, I have a hard time conceiving the idea that God is going to close the holes in the roof by us just praying for it and then leaving it alone. I’m thinking we are supposed to be the hands and feet of Jesus, why would we leave and not fix it as part of an answer to that blessing we are praying for? Once we are done praying though, we say our goodbyes and leave.
Back at our site, I ask Dumi, one of the members from Hope Zimbabwe, if we could go back and fix it ourselves. He said that was definitely possible and it shouldn’t be more than $20 to fix. I think great! this is perfect, I really feel like it’s what we are supposed to do, this woman is going to have a good roof, problem solved. Dumi said we would just have to wait for the guy who built the roof to show us how to fix it.
The very next night I was awakened by a severe rainstorm. The thunder sounded like it was cracking right next to me, the lightning frequently lit up our room and the rain that hit the tin roof sounded like we were under attack. I usually love weather like this but this was the first time I’ve had a moment of fear in a storm. I was constantly going back and forth from awe and fear. In the midst of all this going on I couldn’t help but think of the blind woman we had prayed for. She lives on her own in a tiny hut that is full of leaks. That is when my heart broke for her.
A few days later we went back to the woman’s house to get a better understanding of the damage to this woman’s roof and see if we could find the guy who originally built it. From Dumi’s inspection it was clear, she was going to need a whole new roof which still wouldn’t cost much more than $20. Unfortunately, in order to get started we still had to wait for the guy who originally built it who seems to have disappeared. I started to grow impatient.
While we were there we started talking to the blind woman some more (who still wasn’t any closer to being able to see by the way). It occurred to us when we left the first time that we didn’t even ask this woman if she knows who Jesus is. We were too caught up in trying to bring healing to her physically. Lesson learned, spiritual healing is way more important of a question than physical healing. So my teammate Caleb asks her. She replies and says yes she knows who Jesus is. I then ask (because I am genuinely curious) who is Jesus to her? She tells us that Jesus is her savior and has been with her and taken care of her since she was a little girl.
Well, I am humbled. She never once asked for us to pray for physical healing over her, only blessings over her house. It is so clear from our interactions that she is content and at peace to be in Jesus and knows that He is all she needs. Her faith is strong. We had assumed so much the first time we met her. This lady was teaching me some things that’s for sure. The time then comes for us to leave again so we say goodbye and leave with renewed determination to fix this woman’s roof.
Day after day I would ask Dumi if we had any contact with the guy who made her roof and the answer was always no. So I’m like it’s okay we have time, we can get this done, it’s all good and I find my patience. One day, we go back to the woman’s house just to see if we can find that guy because when he visits, he stays on her compound.
So we walk up to her compound for the third time and we all stop in our tracks.
I thought for a second we were in the wrong place, something was different, something didn’t look right. That’s when I realized, her house wasn’t there anymore. I was speechless. All I could see were the ashes that laid on the ground where her hut once stood. It had burned down.
WHATTTT???!!!!! NO. God, this is not what we prayed for! This is what happens when I pray for blessing over someone?? I prayed and things got worse. Why? I don’t understand. I don’t understand.
After the groups astonishment had passed. We turned to where the blind woman was sitting. She was sitting down feeding her granddaughter some sort of water soup thing. She was taking care of her for the day. I couldn’t find words to say to her except what happened? It turns out she was trying to kill some bugs in her house and it caught on fire. She burned her arm but ultimately she was okay. At the end of our visit, Caleb asks this woman if she could pray for us. She agrees and her prayer was translated to be something like this: God, though I can’t see the color of the grass, I can feel it and I know it’s there. I can’t see the ground or what color it is but I know it’s there. God you have given me everything, I’m content in you.
Yup. I am just going to let you soak that in for a minute. That really happened.
We leave completely at a loss for what to do. We don’t have enough time or money to build this woman a house, we only had a day or two left until we had to be back in the city of Bulawayo. We then began to pray for what we should do next. We don’t get the answer until we were back in the city. All of my teammates were saying that God was telling them to do nothing, to trust that He was going to take care of this woman. I was not okay with this answer, I don’t think any of us were. I honestly fought God/ my teammates on it pretty hard. How could we just leave it alone? I had to humble myself again (alot of humbling is going on this story) and trust God and my teammates that this was in fact what God wanted us to do. So we all decided we weren’t going to do anything except tell people about this experience, we let it go.
Caleb then writes a blog, because he is way more on his blogging game than I am, about what happened and then lo and behold, the creator of the World Race, Seth Barnes, reads his blog and asks Caleb what he needs to do to get this lady a house. After we let go of it, God showed us how He was going to provide for this woman.
So we are now in the process of setting up a way to fund raise and build this woman a house. We talked to our host and got some numbers for how much it would cost. For a solid house, not made out of sticks and mud, costs about $600. It will take 3 months to build because all of the bricks are built by hand, but it will be a house that will last her a life time. Hope Zimbabwe agreed to take over making sure this house gets built once we gather enough money to build it. In the mean time she has a place to stay and I’m continuing to trust in God’s provision towards her.
This is a story about how letting go of your understanding and trusting that even when things get worse than what you hoped for, God is still good and God still has a plan to make things work together for the good of those who love him. He knows what this woman needs and when we asked for healing over her sight, He knew that is not what she needed, and when we asked for her roof to be fixed, He knew He wanted to give her more than a roof, He wanted to give her a house that will last a life time.
