Fiola

The first time I walked into Harvest Church, a small congregation with mostly women, I was drawn to Fiola. A single mother that looked remarkably like Jada-Pinkett Smith and held a beautiful baby girl in her arms. At the end of service she went forward for prayer. As I prayed for her I felt God wanted me to pray against deep pain and  hurt caused by a man in her life and bless her with peace and protection. As I began to speak those words her body shook as all the sorrow she was feeling was poured out before the Lord.
Subsequent times to church she continued to ask  me, “tok tok Bislama?” My reply has been the same, “smol smol”.  We would ooh and ahh at each other’s babies and exchange simple greetings but I continued to be frustrated by the language barrier. I wanted desperately to sit with her and chat after church, to tell her all I saw in her and bring some comfort to her.
Last Sunday I worked up the nerve to ask her to lunch. “Yumi go kaekae Wednesday?” My invitation was met with an enthusiastic “yes.” I was relieved that she clearly wanted to go. In this culture a politely spoken “yes” can mean “no” as to not offend.

Our lunch together was a precious time. I can understand Bislama when spoken slowly and she was gracious enough to take her time. I knew just enough to ask prompting questions and keep things flowing. We made small talk for a bit and then I asked her to tell me her story.  She started at the beginning “Mami blo mi, i no wantem mi”. My mother didn’t want me. Ouch. Through tears the rest of the story unraveled, raped as a teenager, 5 children she is not allowed to see, her adoptive parents rejection over her faith in Jesus. Then came the story of her baby‘s father and how she had recently fled to escape the abuse. After she was finished she looked at me and said the first bit of English I had heard from her “Now, you encourage me”.  I knew I was coming to Vanuatu to minister to broken women, this should have been a dream come true. Here was God giving me my desire, but the weight of her request made my insides turn. In that moment I felt so utterly inadequate. I spouted a few things in half-English, half Bislama that felt so trite, so bleh. She smiled and said “Now, Galatians 5:22?” I had to laugh on the inside, my brain was total mush from having to focus so intently on language throughout lunch and now she wanted me to quote chapter, verse?! I was in big trouble so I smiled and said “mi no save”. She smiled and said “fruit of Spirit”. Of course! “U tellem mi, humility?” She wanted me to explain the English words she had read in her Bible. Scripture is read in English in all of the churches and very few have any grasp of what it means. “Now, self-control?” “Gentleness?” It was the perfect scripture. Sitting in front of me was a woman that so beautifully demonstrated so many fruits of the Spirit. I did my best to explain each one, it wasn‘t perfect but she seemed grateful. After lunch we went straight to the store to buy her a Bislama Bible.

I drove her home down a muddy, bumpy road I had been down many times before on my way to church. Shacks and hanging laundry lined the road. She motioned to pull over. She took me around a shack to another entrance. As I stood at the threshold everything within me wanted to flee. I didn’t want to look, to come face to face with her reality. I slipped off my shoes and walked into a “house” no bigger than my closet back home. The front room had a tablecloth covering the hard concrete floor and a small bag of rice in the corner.  The bedroom was barely large enough to lay down and the only items to be found were a mat and neatly folded baby girl clothes lining the wall. I fought emotion and managed to ask if I could see where she cooked. She took me to a ramshackle building that resembled an oversized outhouse. She lifted the lid of a small pot set upon some rocks to reveal yams that appeared to have been there for a few days, waiting to be dinner once again.  As she walked me to the truck she asked me to pray for her to find work. She told me she didn’t feel safe living there, she was uncomfortable with the man next door. The nights alone with her baby were hard. A job would mean a safer place to live and food on the table.

I came home somber that afternoon. I relayed her living situation to Jeremy, he wept. As night fell I kept thinking of Fiola and her baby girl huddled up on the cold concrete floor wishing I had bought her so much more than a Bible and a bag of sugar. The verse about widows and orphans played over and over in my head. To me she was both.  

As I prayed that night, God gave me a picture of two paths. One path would allow me to ignore the problem, see it as too big, allow Jeremy to be the missionary. I could focus on homeschooling the kids, hang out with only ex-pats and live a nice little life in paradise. The other path would ask me to jump into the trenches with these women. To get dirty. To open my eyes to poverty and pain and fight on behalf of these women. Fight for their joy, for their hearts to be made whole by the One who loves them. In that moment I knew what I wanted more that anything was a little dirt on my hands.