Last week we stayed outside of Momma Marys house in a sea of tents. Momma Mary lives in Ndori or as Paul calls it… the bush bush… (Im starting to think that Paul likes to call everything the ‘bush bush’ so I am not sure what that even really means…but I love it). From her yard you can see hills covered in mud huts with rusty tin roofs, trees of all sorts and little dirt paths connecting them all together. Momma recently started a church and our main purpose in being there was to go around and talk to people in the community and invite them to come.
On our first day, I gathered with two of my teammates and our translator Hezron to pray together before heading out… We made it about 50 yards outside the gate before we saw a hut that just seemed to call to us. We cut through the grass in time to see an older woman pulling a very old woman out of the hut by her armpits. Meet Magdalina and her daugher Rail. We were greeted by Rail as she worked to get her helpless looking mother situated on her little mat in the shade of the house. We sat down and began talking with her. Magdalina recently had a bad encounter with an angry cow that gouged her leg and broke her femur in two places. She had previously been completely independent and able to take care of all her needs at the age of ninety something (which is just crazy in a a nation where the life expectancy is somewhere in the late 50s). It was as though when her leg was crushed so was her spirit. Rail sat back from us seemingly relieved having people there to visit with her mother. We spoke to Magdalina for a while and prayed with her.
I knew there werer many more huts that we were suppose to be visiting but I just couldn’t bring myself to leave and I could see that the rest of the team was feeling the same way. There was something about this woman, I just wanted to sit with her all day and I cant explain why. I started asking ‘what can we do to help, what can we do’ and Hezron just kinda laughed as he translated. Rail just humbly told us that they were fine. Everyone always seems to be ‘fine’ here in Africa but at the same time not. I pulled Rail aside and had a chance to share about last year when Grandma was in the hospital and how she really needed to depend on God to give her the strenght to care for her mom. I love how God is able to take all circumstances… literally all circumstances and use them for good. I never thought I would be able to use the testimony of when my Grandma was so sick and how she beat the odds and is alive as ever this very day to encourage an old woman and her daughter in the bush bush some where in Kenya.
Again… “is there ANYTHING we can do to help…?”
“Can i do laundry? I will go and fetch water? Anything?”
And a tired woman finally agrees.
The three of us spent the rest of the morning with Magdalina and Rail, We fetched a lot of water (and i learned how to carry it back on my head…) helped remud the walls of Magdalinas hut, did load after load of laundry and Kyle even cut down trees in her compound. Magdalina just grinned and kept telling Hezron how we really must love her if we are doing all these things for her.
Yes Magdalina the Father really does love you.
We went back to visit Magdalina every day that week. Praying with her, visiting, bringing snacks and helping Rail with any chores that she would allow.
Each day there seemed to be a lightness that slowly took over Magdalina. She would wave to us through the bushes as we walked up the path to Mommas house from her spot in front of her house. And Rail would dress up for us when we came to visit if she saw that we had a camera and she would pose in the middle of the yard. She was in her 60s but still a child with a heart longing to be called beautiful.
“Tell me a story Dani!” (Dani means grandma here…)
She would tells us about the tribal customs from her old village and about the process she went through of becoming married when she was young. Her father was a cheif and she has 5 children of her own (Rail being the yongest). She is a great grandmother…. I asked her if i was her favorite Grandchild and she said we all were.
I love Magdalina. I love her so much and miss her each day. I wish that you could meet her. I wish you could hear her stories and see her big toothless grin and short gray hair. I wish that everyone could meet her and sit on that mat just barely escaping from the African sun.
I love you Dani.
Please know that the Father sees you there.
