On my team´s first day during ministry with La Iglesia Berea in Iquitos
Peru, they walked very far. They felt the Lord leading them up a hill
on the outskirts of town. As they ascended they found a stream-formed
road rough with matted grass and jagged stones leading to three or four
houses. As they walked this road a woman appeared at her door shouting
¨Hello! ¡Hola!¨ Her name is Jackie.
Sadly I do not have a picture of her. I am most sad about this for
you. Her smile is so warm and bright, her black eyes glitter, and her
teeth, splayed in different directions, seemed to dance with joy as she laughed- which she did often. Each time we went to visit she
immediately invited us in, pulled out all the stools she owned and
wanted to visit with us.
Her home is a one story house built up on
stilts on the down-sloping side and without interior walls. She lives
there with her 2 year old and their dog with it´s new little puppy.
Her husband sometimes comes to visit but they are separated (most
likely they weren´t married in the first place because marriage is not
common practice). She has the traditional thatched roof and a hammock
in the living room for resting and she and her son slept on the floor in the back.
¨Missionaries have never come up here before!¨she exclaimed in Spanish, “I have lived here for 8 months and haven´t seen any. I am so happy to see you.”
We talked about life and church and how cute her dogs are… I loved to visit her.
In her own words she told us that she had been raised Catholic but she could not make it to church to have the priest pray for her and read the Bible for her. It was not until a protestant preacher taught her how to seek God at home that she had a personal relationship with the Lord. But she still practiced praying the Lord´s prayer, and often.
“Every morning when I wake up, when I make food, before we eat, and when we go to sleep, I pray that prayer.” she told me.
“Teach her.” The Lord said clearly.
“teach her what?” I asked. A question seems all to usual of a response to the Lord´s voice.
“Teach her about your passion.”
So it was decided, we would come back on Friday of that week, it was Wednesday, and have a bible study on prayer. She told us many times that she would be waiting for us all day.
Friday came and the Lord put it on my heart to use the Lord´s prayer as a model for her freedom to use her own words. (See my blog entitled The Lord´s Prayer) He told me to use what she knows to find new liberation in her relationship with the Lord, rather than try to teach her something new.
During the study her facial expressions morphed back and forth between being quizzical to an interested concern. When I asked her if she had any questions or if something didn´t make sense she whole-heartedly responded, “No, this is so interesting! I have never thought about these things before and you are explaining them so well.”
Praise the Lord!
See my blog entitled The Lord´s Prayer for the rest of the story.
