DAY FOUR / #fortydayfloodoflove
When the World Ends
You have two choices in life when you hear bad news.
You either laugh or you cry.
My team and I were gathered around this plastic dinner table when we heard that the world was going to end in three days.
We laughed until we cried.
Luz Mila was the one to tell us, and she is pictured to the left in this photo.
Good news is a lot of things get lost in translation on the race & this was one of them. We thought we heard “El mondo termina en tres dias”, but it turns out dias was Dios, and He had just visited her three times on earth. Still not sure how that mistranslation happened, but it did.
It wasn’t uncommon for us to find laughter when Luz Mila was around though.
Luz Mila became a common place fixture at our little plastic table, but it wasn’t by coincidence.
The first time she delivered food to our table we asked for her name, and nobody knew it. As days continued and time progressed we asked more questions about the quiet little woman who delivered our food, but they mostly went unanswered. She would deliver buñuelos and café con leche each morning, but we wanted to know more.
So we took it upon ourselves, and went directly to the source. Broken Spanish and all.
Our Spanish wasn’t fluent, but love is a universal language and I think Luz Mila understood us perfectly well. Conversations started out small and slowly grew as we learned more about her.
She was our ministry host’s sister-in-law, and had grown children of her own. But she was more of a shadow in their household than a family member. No one even knew her name. So we adopted her.
Eventually, she became a staple in our memories from that month. We shared our meals, laughter, prayers, and lives with her. And more importantly, we shared the common thread of Christ’s love with each other.
Luz Mila was a quiet but strong woman, someone whom we might have never known if we hadn’t chosen to. Her smile was bright, her hands were tiny, and her Faith was inspiring.
She cooked our meals when we lived in Colombia, but people are so much more than what they do. People are worth knowing.
