I almost didn’t go. The group was getting ready to walk around the community and hand out invitations for Sunday night church. I was so exhausted from our early morning of praying for people outside the men’s prison and had just laid down for a much-needed nap. But on that Saturday afternoon in Trujillo, Peru, in a foggy daze I picked myself up from my comfortable bed and I will never regret it.
On our walk we handed out flyers to everyone we saw, inviting them to the church service we would be hosting the following night. One of my squadmates, Jake, and I stopped to hand out invitations to two older women in their 60’s, Graciella and Consuela. We called over Jhonny, the worship leader at the church, and Adri, another one of our squadmates because they both speak Spanish and we wanted to be able to understand these women. We discovered that both women were very angry towards God, and as they spoke you could feel how hardened their hearts had become. Graciella showed us the back of her head and from what we could understand she had come to the church for healing and when God didn’t give her the healing that she wanted, she turned her back on Him and the church. As she went deeper into her story her anger turned into sadness and her voice broke into a tearful, quivering sob. She shared with us a story about her abusive childhood and that as a young girl she always wanted to go to church and to know Jesus, but her sister would yell at her and lock her in a closet or a room to keep her from going. She admitted that she was still very afraid of her sister, even though they no longer lived near each other. There’s also a good chance her sister may no longer be alive—but that did not stop Graciella’s inborn fear of her. Graciella also shared with us that she grew up around a lot of people who practiced witchcraft and she felt as though curses may have been spoken over her.
We prayed for her and Consuela—for healing, for redemption, that they would come to know their beautiful savior, for broken curses and broken chains, and for full restoration of their hearts and their souls. We invited them to the church service that Sunday night, none of us really expecting that they would come, or for that matter really be able to find the church. But we should never underestimate the beautiful and powerful ways in which our Lord works.
The next night we had church outside of the compound, with pretty lights strung up in the trees and an assortment of wooden and plastic chairs arranged in rows. As worship started I had completely forgotten about the women we had met just the day before. As we reached the second song I turned and saw Graciella and Consuela walking up the dirt road, wearing the same clothes they had on the day before. As they reached their seats in the very back row I ran over to them, hugged them and kissed them on the cheeks (as Peruvians do to greet one another), welcoming them and telling them how happy I was that they were there.
I took my seat but as the service went on my eyes were fixed on the two women. As we sang worship songs they both clapped along subtly. When one of our teams went up to the front to perform a moving skit, the women stood up in their chairs and craned their necks to see what was going on. During Molly’s sermon, which was all about redemption and how Jesus isn’t concerned with our pasts—that he just wants us right now, the women’s eyes were glued to the pulpit.
At the end of the sermon, Pastor asked anyone who wanted to accept Christ as their savior to come forward. It was like watching a slow motion scene in a movie. Graciella and Consuela sort of pushed each other’s hands back and forth, whispering to each other and you could tell they each wanted it, but they were scared. Finally, after a few moments of hesitation they stood up and walked towards the front of the church together. That night I got to stand up in front of the church behind these two women who had fought so hard and so aggressively against God before, with my hands on their shoulders, praying over them as they asked Jesus into their hearts. The pastor then explained to them, “Tu eres libre;” you are free.
After everyone sat back down I had the privilege of sitting next to Graciella as the Pastor did a gift raffle for all the new attendees. I watched her laugh and giggle like a little girl, and in her half-toothless grin you could see a new found joy that did not exist the day before.
In their 60’s, these two women are just now at the beginning of their new and beautiful lives. The little girl in Graciella finally got to go to church that day without anyone or anything threatening her or holding her back. She got to sing and clap and play games and laugh. And she got to know Jesus, just like she had longed to do for over 50 years of her life.
God doesn’t need us—He wants us. And He wants us all the time: no matter our past mistakes or our current circumstances. He wants to use us, whether we are 6 or 60 or 106. There is no expiration date on God’s promise to mold us into the person He always intended for us to be.
God used me to help bring His kingdom to these two beautiful women on that Saturday evening. Why did He choose to use me? Because I’m just so extremely qualified? Was it just a “right place at the right time” sort of thing? No. It was simply because I was willing—which is the only requirement we ever need to meet. He will equip us with everything else.
The moral of the story: naps are bad.
…Just kidding.
The moral of the story is GO.
If you have an opportunity to go out and serve the Lord or just to help someone, get up off your butt and out of your comfortable beds and houses and GO. I promise you, you will never regret it.
Graciella: left, Consuela: middle. They agreed to taking a photo with me, but not to smiling for it… or looking at the camera. Haha.
