2nd Year beginnings

This is a story I started writing last year after my mission trip. I have to say, I don't have the best habit of both starting things, and also finishing them. So even though it's long, it's incomplete. I thought maybe posting some of it would be a good motivation to finish. And I hope to start posting more regularly. If you make it through the whole thing go ahead and know that I'd give you a big smile and a pat on the back.

Modesta

The story I can tell you about Modesta is incomplete. I know how it ended when I walked out of the picture, but it wasn’t finished yet—so I won’t be the one who can tell you how it ended. Even so, it is true. Honestly that’s how so many of these kind of stories are—the ones we don’t see come to an end. Sometimes they become the stories we don’t tell. But we mustn’t sell them short, these kinds of stories. It’s still Jesus and it’s still real, even if every encounter doesn’t end in dancing in the streets, revival in the grocery stores, a singular moment that changes the course of someone’s life, and a testimony that will have a large congregation hanging on every word. This is a story about me too; a singlar moment that changed my life, even though I don’t know how it ended for Modesta. That’s why I want to tell it.

Our trip was comprised of almost constant activity. Loading and unloading, setting up, praying, tearing down, eating, sleeping and then starting all over again. This story takes place on day two of our stay in Tepic, Mexico. We were working primarily with a local church, but also having healing outreaches where we brought in medicine and doctors. The medicine was kind of an advertising ploy to get people to come out so we could pray for them. If they still needed it afterwards, they could see a doctor. In all there were about 50 of us—first and second year students, our leaders and our translators. After breakfast, we all crammed into 4 church vans and bumped down a dusty road, passing green fields and mountains in the distance until we arrived at our destination for the morning—a migrant neighborhood our local group leader called Los Galleros #3. I don’t know what the people who live there call it. The people who live in this place are believers and I’m sure we weren’t the first group of gringos to pile out of beat up vans with our bins of supplies, sunscreen, and plastic bottles filled with filtered water. There was a cement slab with a few shade trees and a line of small square one room brick homes to the right. Further off there was a washing area and a soccer field, we were just at the outermost edge of the neighborhood. The men were off working in the sugar cane fields for the day and several women along with their children hugging at their skirts took a break from their daily chores of cooking and washing to greet us.

Those of us who spoke a bit of Spanish began to explain that we were so pleased to be welcomed into the neighborhood. We told them our plan for the morning: a kids program, we have medicine, and that we want to pray for God to heal those who were sick in the neighborhood—did they know anyone who needed prayer? Anyone who was sick? I told them about some of the miracles we had seen in Tepic already, the man with cataracts, other people with aches and pains who had been healed.

The woman on the end of the line of greeters pointed to a woman sitting in the shade about 10 yards away. “Well, she’s blind. That woman can’t see.”

“She can’t see?”

“No, she can’t see.”

A short pause. Un ratito.

“Hmm. Ok.”

It went something like that.

I think I probably just stood there for a minute, wondering if I should go get someone, wondering if I should wait until we set up our plastic chairs on the slab to start the official event. Mostly just shocked that this was to be my initiation to praying for the sick. Seemed to me like a big first step.

A lot was going on during that short pause. Running through my thoughts in those few seconds was the base of many hours of teaching I’ve been soaking in for the past 6 months, (more like the past year or so if you count the sermons on CD I listened to before moving to Redding), and a story from the night before. A team of a few students had stopped to pray for a man who was missing a leg out on the street. Yes, praying for this man’s leg to be regenerated, restored, to be created. Crazy I know, but things like this have happened. During the course of events they discovered that he had cataracts and could only see about 4 feet in front of him. This equaled another opportunity to pray. After they prayed for his eyes his sight improved dramatically and he was able to discern the number of fingers they were holding up from about 30-35 feet away.

But, picking up where we left off at the pause: I reasoned that God wasn’t waiting around for the plastic chairs and loose structure of our plan for the day to get started with what he wanted to do; it was as good a time as any to have a go at it, as my Australian friend Gavin would have put it. I reassured myself with the thought that it really doesn’t have so much to do with me anyway. And I figured, if Jesus will do it once, he’ll do it again—and, he’s done it a lot more than once.

I think I mumbled something like, “I’d like to meet this woman. Can I meet her?” I must have messed it up a bit in my Spanish because I seemed to confuse the woman I was talking with; but she eventually got my meaning and walked me over to the place where a woman sat with her back slouched in a red plastic lawn chair, hands in her lap, expressionless. As I remember it she looked more empty than anything else. She wore old jeans and a plaid button up sleeveless shirt that showed the hair under her arms. Her long black hair was pulled back into a low ponytail and her skin was brown and weathered. I knelt down in front of her and took her hand in my hands. The four women who had come to greet us at the slab also followed behind and created a backdrop of colorful dresses and curious faces.

I guess we had started.

“Hola Senora, me llamo Amy. Soy de los Estados Unidos, y estoy aqui con un grupo. Queremos ohrar para las enfermas para que Dios puede les hace sana. Creamos que Dios es muy feliz y que él no quiere que nadie sufre nunca jamas. Una mujer me dijo que no puedes ver, pero creo que hoy dia, vas a ver…” I said it pretty much just like that, mistakes and all. Basically: Hi. I’m Amy, (Beth doesn’t really have a decent Spanish translation—so I just leave it off.) from the U.S., with a group. We want to pray for God to heal the sick people because we think He’s happy and that He doesn’t want any one to suffer.

Then I told her about the man from the night before and that God wants to heal her. “Como te llamas Senora?

“Modesta.”

Ok Amy Beth, one thing at a time. Remember what you’ve learned. Find out what happened.

I got all this with me acting as my own translator, so some of the details were lost: Fifteen years ago (I think she was almost 30 years old) she was working, somewhere, didn’t quite get that part. She felt a pain in the back of her head, her eyes were red, for a week her eyes were red and she cried and cried and cried, and cried out to God, “Dios perdoname, perdoname, forgive me God.” A week after the pain in the back of her head, or neck her vision just faded away. She never married, and she has no children.

All the while I’m holding her hand, squatted on the ground at her feet. And though she couldn’t see the others, and she couldn’t see my face, she seemed quite comfortable with the idea that a stranger from 2000 miles away would walk up to her, take her hand, and ask God to give her sight back.

It didn’t feel like a performance, but it also didn’t feel quite real to me. In a way, a tragic way, it felt like an experiment. Kind of a, well, let’s just go for it and see what happens kind of a way. Something about being able to get in a van in 3.5 hours and never return inspires a faith for risk taking that is beneficial if something good happens, but might also come from shallow motives and an understanding that you won’t have to own up to it day after day if God does not heal when you ask him to. If the person is healed you have a story to put in your back pocket and if they’re not, you tried your best and you can comfort yourself with the thought that you don’t know what happened after you left. I know that’s cynical, and it’s probably not the right attitude to have at all, but it’s also honest. You go from there, leaving that place behind and working through your understanding of why some people are healed, some people aren’t, and what that means about your God.

Another student and a translator wandered over and we began to pray. We invited the other Mexican women to pray with us, but somewhere in the first 20 minutes or so they lost interest and returned to their square brick apartments to finish cooking lunch, leaving us crowded in a little three person heap around Modesta.

An older woman, maybe it was Modesta’s mother, sat in the cement porch kitchen area outside the apartment room where we were praying. “Estámos pobres. We’re poor,” she said to us. The tears in her eyes looked like they had been there for years, like her eyes were so used to tears that she didn’t have the strength to cry them out anymore—like there was no point to getting rid of them because others would take their place anyway. She said it again, “We’re so poor.”

I had no words for her. I felt helpless.

I was concentrating on Modesta. If she could see, if her sight would return…maybe…That would be something I could bring to help. That would be something we could actually bring to help these people. Hope. Jesus.

We invited the Holy Spirit to come. Our translator spoke to Modesta in Spanish as we prayed in English. We spoke to her eyes and commanded the blindness to go, and released the presence of Jesus. “Come Lord Jesus, be here with us, be here.” We put our hands over her eyes. We did all the things that we’ve seen other people do and prayed the prayers we’ve heard them pray. We took our hands away and asked her, “does it seem better, can you feel anything in your body?”

She could see shadows. But that was the same as before. I looked at her eyes. Occasionally in the right eye a bright yellow splotch would float by over the pool of her cloudy black pupil. The other eye was more gray with the same inconsistent clouds.

There was only one other student there with me at that time. We gave each other looks saying, “Are you getting anything?” “No, are you?” “What now?” We prayed in tongues. Not ready to give up. Continuing to encourage Modesta, “You will see. Vas a ver, vas a ver.” Somewhere in the hours of sermons and stories and teachings I’ve heard, I recalled someone saying there is power in declaring things like that, so I just kept saying it, for her faith and for mine too. It still seemed like an experiment. I don’t quite know how to express my faith for the miracle in those moments, and I wonder if my attitude in treating the situation like a detective might had any bearing on the length of time it seemed to take and our lack of progress. When we got home I heard a story of a fellow student who was praying for men in a hospital in Mozambique on his mission trip, he was having trouble communicating with one man to find out why he was in the hospital so he could know what to pray for him. He kept asking questions and getting totally unrelated answers in return. Eventually the man pointed to his ears. There was the problem; he couldn’t hear the questions, because he couldn’t hear at all. This guy puts his hands over the sick man’s ears and says, “Open in Jesus’ name.” (He’s from New Zealand and when he was telling the story, that line with his accent sounded really powerful.) Just really simple like that, and yes, the ears opened. The man could hear. Just like that, two hands and four words. Not only that but all the other men in that ward, 8 of them, were healed from whatever it was ailing them—all in one afternoon. When I heard that story I thought maybe we should have tried doing it more like that, maybe that would have worked better than trying to sift through years of memories and trauma with so much of what was being said getting lost in translation.

Nevertheless, I was doing my best to try and tap into the Spirit of God. To try and go where he was going, and do what he wanted to do. I don’t feel like my emotions were engaged. But in my heart I released the responsibility to uphold Jesus’ reputation as a healer to him alone, and that takes a lot of pressure off. It takes out pride and leaves room for compassion for the person who needs a miracle. I decided to pray as much as I could with as much love as I could, but beyond that, I had to let it go.

Another pause.

I turned my head again to look back at Glenn—a second year student from the West Coast who was there with us in the beginning. I saw it in his eyes, he had an idea. He asked the translator to have Modesta put her own hands over her eyes and he moved closer to Modesta, touching hands, which now formed delicate brown cups over her eyes, with his. We waited a short moment.

“Ask her what she sees.”

“Que puedes ver?”

We saw her mouth, smiling in front of us, teeth even.

“Jesu Christo.”

My eyes widened and our looks back and forth to each other were now full of surprise, happy surprise, excitement, hope even. Amazement really, like coming upon a treasure, a precious secret uncovered for the first time. I looked at Glenn, prompting him to continue and his face was expressing a lot of the same sentiments. I guess he didn’t know that was what her blind eyes were going to see either.

Ask her what he’s doing.

“Que esta haciendo?”

“Esta tocandome, he’s touching me, he’s touching my eyes.”

I was floored, sitting there at her feet. In our church culture here it’s pretty common to have someone imagine Jesus in front of them, to picture him and in the minds eye, in the spirit’s eyes, and interact with him. It usually causes a lot of internal conflict for me because I never know if I’m just making up stories or what. But there’s always something to say because if God is the God of your heart and mind, there’s no reason he couldn’t use your very imagination to speak to you. But, we hadn’t told Modesta to imagine anything. No prompting, no straining. This was really happening. It surprised me probably more than it should that he showed up to love her in that way. After all he is so good, so faithful.

We prayed again after that, awfully expectant that when she took her hands away from her eyes we were going to see some improvement. I mean Jesus was right there! Touching her eyes for crying out loud! But she moved them to her lap and I saw those same shadowy clouds, that same yellow splotch. She said she could see figures, shadows of people, but again that was the same as before. One thing did seem to change though; she believed she was going to see. She was laughing, smiling. She said she felt so peaceful.

I almost don’t know where to go from here. How to tell you the rest of the story. We kept praying for hours, with almost everyone else on the team rotating through to pray for a while. We moved places, into the light, into the shade, standing, sitting, talking, not talking. And then we left.

The hours passed quickly and our leaders were starting to look at their watches. I knew I wouldn’t be able to make it back down that bumpy dirt road to the church if I didn’t use the restroom before we left. So that was how I had to leave her, hugging her, leaving her in a dark little room, telling her, “Jesus’ truth is even more true than what we are experiencing, and if he says she’s going to see, then she’s going to see, Todavia, Vas a ver,” then running off to prop myself against a cement wall and pee in a hole in the floor. Not the most beautiful closing scene I’ve ever heard of that’s for sure.

So I don’t know what happened from there on out with Modesta. When we left her, she wasn’t seeing. I don’t know what she must have been feeling. I hope not abandoned.

But I do know, Jesus came. He was there. At one point we even told her to go with him, that he could take her to the place in heaven where God keeps all the spare body parts—the body parts room, you might call it, is part of a teaching we’re all familiar with in ways that creative miracles happen—that God has all these spare parts laying around in a room in heaven and we can just reach up there and grab them as needed. After seeing the look on her face when we told her she could ask Jesus to take her to heaven I piped up to make sure she knew it was just for vacation. She laughed and when she went, she picked out two blue eyes, azulitos she said, blue like the sea.