This year, we’ve brought you stories inspired by our We Are the World Race Campaign. We’ve already explored stories of some of our favorite Race contacts. This month, we’re sharing stories about women-in-missions. (Don’t worry guys, your turn is coming soon!) Our experiences with women we’ve met around the world have taught us what it really means to be a woman. They teach us about beauty, femininity, joy, and God’s love for each one of his daughters. This month we want to celebrate all things women-in-missions related, and give you a chance to share your story as well.
Kyla Hatcher, of September 2013’s U Squad, experienced something like this on a visit to Angkor Wat, one of the Ancient Seven Wonders of the World and a favorite day off trip for Racers in Cambodia. The temples are crowded with women and children begging or selling trinkets to tourists. But what Kyla found was a woman who needed love and joy, just like her. Kyla realized that this woman was just like her.
“Will she ever know joy?” I thought as I stared into the face of this woman. Her years of wisdom had created beautiful lines of history and memories upon her face.
I point to my camera, and then to her, a symbol she is far too used to from all the tourists that walk through the temples. She nods her head.
Attempting to avoid eye contact as people pass between us, I look at her and say ‘beautiful’. I do not know how to express this well in her native tongue. Yet, I believe she understands, because as I look to the corner of her mouth I see a hint of a smile shyly making its way upon her face.
“You,” I point to her, “are beautiful.”
There it is, a wide-open mouth with no teeth to fill the space. The memories that encase her eyes light up, and from a soft voice emerges laughter, happiness.
Happiness, a temporary fleeting emotion that creates a sense of joy for a short moment in time.
Joy. An understanding that no matter how sorrowful I am now, that eternally, I hold the spirit of joy, the spirit of our God, and that will never leave me. That I am nurtured, loved, and I exist to share with others the source of that love.
Joy knows that no matter how challenging society attempts to make life, God has made our purpose quite simple: We exist to live in his love and to bring glory to his name by sharing his love.
This will, of course, at times present challenges, but the purpose never changes due to circumstances or our own downfalls. We experience his joy in knowing his love and the direction of his spirit within our souls.
Has this woman, in all her years, ever known such a joy?
Has she ever known her beauty through her creator? Was she raised around the walls of these temples? She has known pain. She has known fear. She has known the happiness of the temporary, but has she known joy?
The practices of Buddhism and Hinduism do not lean kindly to the idea of joy.
Joy would be a strong emotion that the self cannot control. Living in joy includes living in a life that expresses joy. Buddhism seeks to neutralize the self. No attachment to emotions, to people, to the surroundings and showing any emotions outwardly displays that you do not have a control over yourself.
Hindus seek to please their gods, but there are so many gods they can never truly please them all. They exist to seek non-existence.
I show her the photo, and continue to say ‘beautiful’.
She looks at herself, laughs, covers her mouth and turns her head to the side. I turn off the camera, slip it back into its bag, and place it on my side. I kneel down further, so that I am now face-to-face with this woman whose name I do not know, whose story I only know from the memories upon her face and the stains upon her knees, but whose smile I have been graced to see.
‘Thank you, Beautiful,’ I say.
“Kaunosrei da srasa saat robsakhnhom,” God whispers to her in her native language.
Kyla saw beauty in the face of a woman who may have never heard the name of Jesus. She experienced the love of her Creator for this woman who didn’t speak her language. You could experience things like this too. Click here to sign up for your own World Race adventure now, or here to subscribe to our updates page for more stories like Kyla’s.
