She pulled open the broken screen door that clung onto its last little hinge and revealed a dimly lit room that housed a single cot on the far wall. My group of six squeezed into the tiny room. And there sitting on the cot was one of the most tragic sights we had yet to see.
Rewind. March 4, 2013 the first Monday of the month, my team had been told by our contact to be ready at 10am to start our week of door to door evangelism. A local church called Rey de Reyes asked to partner with us to reach the community.
Personally, I wasn't relishing the idea of going door to door. We had really plugged into our ministries and developed a routine. This meant we would be giving those up for a whole week to work with a church very different than your American church (there was a Conga line one service, need I say more?), and be doing ministry that isn't very relational. You knock on the door share a few things, pray, embrace awkwardness and probably never see them again.
The Lord really changed my heart about this ministry during that week, though, because there were numerous encounters where we saw God moving in unmistakable ways. So back to the story…
Tuesday. We had been evangelizing for a couple hours and happened upon one house where a woman named Maria welcomed us in. Her heart was very open to our presence and she called her family into the room so we could pray over them. Afterwards she asked us to pray over her mother.
Our group followed her over to the house next door and waited for the go ahead before walking inside. In the front room I saw beautiful old portraits of a lovely woman and other family heirlooms displayed on the front wall. We followed Maria to a hallway where that broken door stood to the right and we entered the room.
Her mother was sitting on the bed in a cotton white floral nightgown. Her skin was saggy, wrinkled and thick looking. Her pepper white hair was frazzled all over. The skin around her eyes seemed to be invading her vision, eyes sunk deep back into their sockets. Her jaw seemed to be using its last bit of strength and her speech was slurred.
What struck me the most was her hands. They were so swollen that there wasn't separation between her fingers and palms. It was like they had molded together into one sort of nub. Her few fingernails were stained yellow.
I held onto one of those hands as my team lifted her up in prayer. The entire time she was moaning in pain. "Mi estomago"and "dolor" ("my stomach" and "pain") were the only slurred words I was able to pick out of the moans. She would lean to one side coming towards her pillow but never laying all the way down. Never finding any rest. Maria sobbed as we prayed.
Maria explained that her mother did have medicine but nothing was helping. Illness was heavily plaguing her body and there was nothing she could do. She could only watch as her mother cried in torture.
We left feeling the weight of the pain we had just seen resting heavily on us. My leader Alyssa confessed that her prayer over this woman was that God would give her real rest and end her suffering. Eric, Laura and Christina all confessed to praying the same thing.
I would think it strange to pray passing over someone but seeing this woman who had lived a full life but now was stuck in such horrible affliction, I also wanted that for her. Life didn't have anything left for her and her children helplessly watched her deteriorate from pain I cannot imagine.
Wednesday passes and it's Thursday morning. Each day is so full that thoughts of Maria and her mother are no longer heavily on our minds. That quickly changed.
Pastor Lionel, who had been our driver for the week, arrived at Casaverde to pick us up and gave us an option. We can go to another neighborhood to pray over people or visit Maria and pay her our condolences. Her mother had passed away.
My group looked at each other in amazement. Apparently, Maria and her mother had gone to the hospital the night we prayed and on Wednesday she breathed her last. She found her rest.
We did visit Maria that day. She told us how a woman had come up to her at the hospital and asked if she wanted prayer. She told the woman that she had already received all the prayer she needed that day. Her confidence in us and what God had done shown forth in her eyes, the sadness but also peace gleamed forth.
I am still awestruck that I was able to be a part of that woman's story. That my team and I could be the tools used to usher in peace and rest, as well as, getting to experience the Lord's quick response to our plea, truly amazes me. That God chose
us to go to that house, at that time, for her last hours reminds me of the value of each day.
Each day matters. You can make a difference. God will use you for great things. Will you go and see?
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