This week our front gate broke. I called a friend who called an acquaintance. A young man arrived on an old motorbike with a bald front tire from way across town. As he was working on the gate motor he answered a few of my conversational questions.
“I am a Christian from the Assemblies of God.”
“I am one of eight children.”
Then he stopped working and started telling his story. “My dad abandoned our family when I was 3 years old. He always liked other women, outside of his marriage to my mom. He had 6 children with my mom, and 2 with other women. Finally he left us for one of his lovers. My mom raised all six of us. We were very poor. One time when our electricity got cut because we could not pay for it a man showed up at our gate. He asked questions about my father. Finally he told my mom, ‘I am your husband’s cousin from São Paulo (5,000 kms away)”. This sounded plausible, so mom let him in the house. He stayed all day. In the evening my mom got concerned because here was a strange man in the house, and her and us kids. She decided to talk to him. She talked from 7 pm to midnight, using candles for light because we had no power. She told her testimony, and how her husband abandoned us, and how God was helping her. Finally the man said, ‘I have decided to tell you the truth. I am not your husband’s cousin. I live in São Paulo. Your husband stole my wife and that blew up my family. I decided I would do the same to him. I found out where he was from, and I came here to kill you all, to do the same to him as he did to me. Now I see that you do not deserve this, and I decided not to kill you. I will kill him. Here, look in my bag.’ He opened his satchel and showed her a revolver and a dagger. ‘I was going to wait until you were all asleep. But now you can guard my bag for the night, and I will not do this.’ The next morning the man left. Soon he was back from the grocery store with two huge boxes of food. This was an incredible windfall and blessing for our family at that time. That man became like an uncle to us, helping us every so often. Mom was just talking about him the other day. He died recently.”
“What happened to your dad?”
“He never got killed. He is now a pastor of an Assemblies of God church.”
“Another time my sister, when she was 8, was riding her bicycle. It did not have the rubber part of the pedals, just the iron stub. She fell with her bike, and one of the iron stubs sliced into her calf. Over the next days her leg started to dry up at the calf. Tetanus set in and her thigh got swollen. Finally she died. My mom got the prayer ladies from the church. They came and gathered around my sister and cried and prayer. My sister remembers leaving her body and watching them from the ceiling, this group of ladies and my mom praying and crying. Then suddenly she returned to her body and opened her eyes. After that she started healing until she was completely better. She lives near where I live now. She is 32 years old, and has a gift of prophetic dreams . . . “
The stories continued to flow. The stories continued to flow. God is miraculously providing for his mom, enabling her to build a house, while she is sick . . . It got dark. I was tired. He would have kept going. Aslan is on the move, and the poor have a special place in His heart.
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