Oralia Espinola is on my squad. I say ‘is’ even though she is currently back in the States because her 2 and a half month journey embodied what the entire 11 months is about; about discovering yourself and letting go that God may use you in a deeper, more grand way to influence and love the children He’s lost.
Oralia is from Texas. Fashionable. Independent. Sweet. She developed stomach issues and a fickle fever within our first month in Zambia. She could hardly hold any food down. By the time we had to transition to Malawi, Oralia was recovering slowly from her illness. Within her first week in Malawi, things got worse. In addition to her stomach, which was still giving her issues, she twisted her ankle and developed two blisters that opened and began to fester. Even after ultiple trips to the local clinic and then to the biggest city in Malawi, things continued to deteriorate. Oralia continued to develop ‘blisters’ even as she was flown to an international hospital in Nairobi, Kenya for medical facilities and care that could treat whatever breakdown was in her body. She was there for two weeks and in that time multiple more wounds surfaced and her doctors told her they believed she had an autoimmune disease called Pyoderma Gangrenous. The wounds and symptoms were exacerbated by being in Africa. Oralia stayed in the hospital until she was well enough to travel back to the States where she currently is.
But man, did the Lord change her heart! Oralia went through 2 and a half months of a physically limiting and painful journey. To what end? To go back home? That’s a question that surfaced many a time in my heart, and I know in hers. But it was through this circumstance that the Lord broke her of her independence and began to teach her how to rely on Him. Fully rely on Him. She never got sick in the States and here she was in and out of the hospital more times than she was ever at ministry.
Read her latest blog on how she cherishes the growth the Lord took her through.
