The D.R. Diarios
I don’t know much Spanish. In fact, I told a man in the market that I would pray for his juevo’s (I thought it meant “eyes”, evidently, it means “eggs”. I’m really wishing I would have paid more attention in Spanish class… also… I wish that man would have at least been carrying eggs so I didn’t look like a complete idiot… yeah, he wasn’t.)
There’s one thing that I do know about Spanish words and names… they almost ALWAYS have meanings beyond the letters mashed together.
The meaning of the name Carmela is garden, vineyard, orchard.
I had the pleasure of meeting a woman named Carmela a few days ago. We were walking house to house telling many about Jesus and what He’s done for our lives. We entered a a barbed wire fence into a yard that had a stream that separated the road from the house. After CAREFULLY crossing a make-shift foot bridge while holding all things valuable close to me in case I fell, we walked towards the “back yard” around a joyful teal and pink house.
In the back yard was a working station, kids bathing in the stream, livestock of all kinds, a dog named Bobby, and Carmela, shelling peanuts so diligently that she barely even noticed our arrival. After we did the normal greeting of kissing and hugging and exchanging the “como estas?”… we sat and began to talk about Carmela’s life.
Carmela has a myriad of health issues. Her sight is fading due to a long stint of diabetes, her blood pressure is high and she often gets dizzy spells when exerting too much energy, and the aches and pains of a life long lived puts mobility at a lower priority. Despite all these woes, Carmela first spoke about how she came to know Jesus.
At the age of 17, she asked Jesus into her heart. Ever since, the Word of God has been her portion, even when life fed her a drought. Even today, she cannot even see her grandchildren, she can’t read the Word of God, she can’t see His beauty that He created just to delight her… but Carmela lives by the truth and promise that abides inside of her. She spoke of never-ending faith that ends in a resting place like a rich garden. We talked about good fruit and God being the vine and us the branches.
Funny enough, Carmela’s house was situated in a huge garden/planting field. The view from her back yard encompassed the luxury SO MANY of us Americans go on vacation to find. She has this surrounding her everyday, but she cannot see it. She has this inside of her everyday, and she refuses to keep it to herself.
After we prayed for her physical ailments, Carmela began to give us encouragement to keep on teaching about Jesus because faith is what makes the Garden bloom. What a sweet woman, what a sweet heart, what a sweet, blooming flower she is in the Kingdom of God!
