2013-02-27 – The Journey
Some Journeys cannot be planned …
Sometimes I find myself sitting in these surreal situations and I just have to pinch myself and say “Are you sure”? Today is one of those days. I looked up to find myself sitting on a mat,
under a tree, in the bush just down the road from where I stay. As I gazed out, I found I was sitting eye
level with the top of the grass. It was
a beautiful day, a sky as big as you can imagine, a beautiful cyan blue with
the brown of the bush grass waving gently in the breeze. I could see the tops of fences and the tops of
mud walled tukals with their grass roofs
far off in the distance. I could hear the voices of children playing and women
talking as they made their way up and down the road and stopped to visit on
their way from here to there. I could
feel the hard, cracked earth underneath my “seat” with the heat radiating up
through the mat. I could feel the breeze
as it gently made its way through the bush across the way, across the hard
baked land as it gently brushed our skin and continued on its journey.
I blinked and found I really was surrounded
by African women and we were laughing and having a conversation. A little evangelism work was going on here,
so far removed from my intentions when I walked out the door with Elizabeth (my
language teacher) this morning that I could not have begun to imagine. The
journey began with the intention of finding out why the lady had not come back
to finish our stove. It ended with the
words of God spoken through a tiny lady on a mat in Akobo, South Sudan…
We arrived at her grass hut in the middle of the bush to
find the children playing outside and the girl that helped her on
Saturday. But we didn’t see her, so we
waited under the tree. Soon she came and
brought a spotlessly clean rolled up mat and invited us to sit. We did the usual introductions and continued
to talk about the stove.
She began to tell her story.
On Saturday, she went to the river to collect the clay to finish the
stove. While she was there she found a shell and so she pulled it from the
mud. As she made her way back through
the water, she tripped and fell. When
she stood up she found she had lost the shell.
She looked, those with her looked, but the shell was carried down the
river they were convinced.
Since the fall, she has been “spinning”, the motion she made
with her hand, and according to Elizabeth, there is not a way to put it but to
say, “she falls down like she is dead, but she isn’t”. Ahh, faint!
That I understand. The others,
and she points in a large circle around her indicating the women in nearby
tukals, tell her it is because she tried to take the stone that belongs to the
witch so she has been cursed.
I talked to her for a minute about going to the hospital
about the fainting. She can’t go because
they will give her an injection and those people aren’t trained to give her an
injection, they just want to practice on her.
I explained they would check her and her baby and make sure they were
ok. They would try to find the reason
for her spinning and falling down. I
tried to tell her that going to the hospital can prevent problems, but I don’t
know if she will go or not. It is hard
to break a cultural belief.
Elizabeth asked her something I didn’t understand, but she
told her that she had been baptized. I asked her if she believed in God, she
said she was baptized but she can’t pray because her husband won’t let her go
to church anymore. I looked around. I was in this amazing, God given, beautiful
land.
All I could think to say was “It looks to me like you have
the perfect place to pray. I don’t
believe the stone you lost was from the witch.”
I picked up a handful of dried, hard, cracked dirt and broke it between
my fingers. I know God gave me the words
because I wouldn’t have thought them on my own.
As the dirt began to crumble and fall back to the ground I said, “God
made this earth and God made those heavens, (pointing at the sky)”. She had a similar shell around her neck and I
pointed at it and said, “God made that shell and the one like you lost. They are all gifts from God. It was not a curse from the witch.”
Then we began to talk about the ways she could pray, when
you are grinding, when you are pounding, when you are shaking the grain or
sifting the sand. You can talk to God
anywhere, anytime”.
We sat in silence for a while. Each lost in our own thoughts. I realized several other women had gathered
while I was talking. A baby girl climbed
up in my lap wearing the traditional clothing – a band of beads around her
waist, a single strand around her neck.
Three more children stood beside her.
The baby startled me because most are afraid and run crying from my
white skin. She was so trusting, so soft
and so gentle as she settled herself in.
One tiny hand reached up and touched my face and then my glasses. And
she was happy. And so was I.
Somewhere in there the conversation continued. She was saying God really did send me to them.
He didn’t just send me to the women in the church or the women’s
group. He said you could come and sit
on our mat and can talk to us, even the people who can’t go to church.
I just wanted to cry.
I walked out the door this morning, in my malaria induced fever, wanting
to make sure the stove was finished before I leave for Addis – that is a whole ‘nuther
story! What I ended up with was a God ordained moment in time in which a tiny
woman, sitting on a mat, under a tree in Akobo, South Sudan, delivered the most
powerful 23 word sermon I have ever heard in my life…words straight from the
mouth of God through the mouth of my tiny little stove builder.
Thanks be to God!
Amen!
