I have done house visits in Guatemala and Romania, but one of my favorites has to be this one our team did the other day. A house visit is basically you going to meet people in the community at their homes and getting share with them the gospel or just creating a relationship with them and getting to know them. It’s so sweet and can be super fun! During ministry, Angelo, our shepherd, took us out to go walk and talk about ministry and how it is going and what we want to do with the rest of our time here.
While we are walking we come across a homestead down this dirt road. Angelo casually looks at us and says, “Oh yeah, that’s my mom’s house.” Immediately most of us start freaking out because the carepoint is so close and Angelo has never mentioned anything about his mom, so of course we had to go and meet her!
When I tell you this woman was so excited to see us, I mean that she was laughing so much and had the biggest smile across her face. She hugged all of us, gave us guava to try, and was just so excited that people came to see her. Her name was Wendy and she could not hold in her excitement for how happy she was to meet us. Unfortunately, our bus had just gotten to our carepoint to take us home, so we had to quickly say goodbye. But all of us were determined to go back to her house the next day.
We got her a pastry at the local grocery store and headed back to Wendy’s house the next day with Angelo. We walk back up the path to her house and we can see her running out of her house to greet us. She hugs all of us, laughing, smiling, and just so overwhelmed with joy just because we were there. I thought she couldn’t get more excited, but then I gave her the pastry and her eyes got to big, she did a little happy laugh, said “this is for me?”, and then gave us all a huge hug again. After talking for a little bit, Wendy took us around her homestead, to show us her chickens, her large garden, and a variety of different fruit trees that were all around her house. She had mango, pawpaw, banana, oranges, and limes, and she even picked some fresh limes off the trees to give to us. She was so happy to share her life and told us that when all of the trees were full grown that we would have to come back and eat some with her. Everything that she had, she did not hesitate to ask us if we wanted it. Wendy’s generosity and joy is honestly something I look up to.
She sat us down a table inside of her home and gave us all water and some raw sweet potatoes to eat (which was actually really good). We talked for a little while about our families and I showed her mine and she showed me all her kids and talked all about them. We listened to one of Angelo’s songs and got to just share with her how the carepoint ministry was going. She was so quick to listen and was just so excited to have visitors to be with her. We stay for maybe an hour talking and then we headed back to the carepoint. We hope that we will be able to go back to her house and talk to her about Jesus and maybe make traditional fat cakes with her! Either way, her generosity, joy and willingness to let people into her home was just so cool to see how the Lord shines through his people that he loves!
– Lauren
