Today is my birthday, and I am so grateful that the Lord continues to choose to teach me new things! We went to visit Gogo Eliya this afternoon for the first time since being back in Swaziland since earlier this month. She had huge smiles and bright eyes for each of us as well as a noisy kiss on the cheek for Eric and me. As we sat at her feet on straw mats in the dirt we were able to re-connect after being apart for roughly two and a half months. She told us her older granddaughter is staying with an uncle since the teachers are striking and there is no reason for her to go to school right now. (Most of the local school children are not receiving any education, due to this strike by the teachers demanding fair pay) Another granddaughter is living on the homestead now, with her new baby boy. The youngest granddaughter continues to fight off HIV in her frail, small body. Gogo is concerned that due to the fact that health workers are starting to strike now also, the small clinic where they go each month to collect the girl’s ARV medication (anti-retro viral, to combat the effects of HIV) will either not be open or not be staffed. (Government run hospitals/clinics are not functioning due to strikes, same reason as above…) Gogo also struggles with spots in her vision and cloudy vision, most likely due to cataracts. Gogo also tells us that someone has been stealing chickens out of her yard at night. She takes the time to give glory to God. She praises Him and thanks Him for the chair she is sitting on and the bed she has to sleep in at night and the new house she and her family are able to live in, enough food to eat today…all tangible ways that the Lord Almighty answered this amazing woman of faith as she cried out to Him in her prayers day after day after day. Our ministry partner becomes a bit emotional at this last part. He tells us that it fills his heart with so much joy and gratitude to be witness to how God has looked out for this woman and been her Provider. It fills us all with so much joy and gratitude to have the gift of sometimes being the ones to bring the chairs, or the bed, or the cement blocks for a house or the bags of food all the while knowing that it is the Lord doing the real work…
As we enter into a time of prayer with Gogo, she quietly says something to our ministry partner to translate for us. “She is asking you to pray for the ones stealing the chickens, they are poor, they don’t know Jesus and she wants for them to know Jesus.”
Eric is struck silent for a moment, tears brimming in his eyes as the prayer forms on his lips. Both Claire and Jacob are looking down, still. A lump forms hard and dry in my throat. Sometimes it is hard to pray a prayer. Sometimes the grace of an African Gogo puts us to shame. She understands that the poverty of the one stealing her chickens goes much deeper than material poverty. Gogo reminds us that their real poverty is spiritual; it originates in the soul before it manifests itself in the body. Even one who has so little realizes that she has much because she has the love of Christ in her heart. She knows that no matter what this life may throw at her or take away from her she possesses something, the one thing that will never be lost. Eternity in the presence of the One who watches over her and the ones she watches over; the One who sees her needs and provides fully for her; the One who has heard her prayers in the past and hears her prayers now…even the prayers for a thief…perhaps, especially the prayers for a thief.
