Remembering Oaxaca

“Please remember to pray for us when you return.” His voice is earnest,  his eyes searching our faces. He sends his son, the one in the family who can read and write, to go get paper. His instructions are simple: “Write our names down so that they’ll remember.” I take the paper, honored by his vulnerability.

And how could I forget them? Standing in the courtyard of their adobe home, praying together – some of us in English, one voice in Spanish, and another in their native tongue of Zapoteco.

How could I forget their tiny church, overflowing to standing-room-only as people gathered to watch a film about the life of Jesus? The only film ever translated into their own language. Their wonder as the book of Luke is lived out before them on screen. The way they cradle the MP3 players that have the words of Jesus in their own language – the first time they’ve had access to a Bible in their homes.

How could I forget one of the village leaders inviting us into his home and sitting with rapt attention as we listened to Jesus’ teaching on being born again in John 3? I couldn’t understand the words in his language but my heart was knit with his as I recalled Jesus’ conversation with Nicodemus. I watched him as we listened in the quiet still of the evening. Words of life echoing around the room. Emotion across his face as he nodded and took them in.

How could I forget their hospitality and their warmth? Offering what they had to us and taking the leftovers for themselves. Warm pepitas; fresh seeds from their own garden bounty and cooked on their open fire stove that is so common in the mountain homes. Wrapped up  in paper and given with a wide, proud grin.

How could I forget the boy who saw Rick & I taking a walk and came running from his home with the MP3 player at his ear? He and his mother had been listening on their porch.

How could I forget walking through the cornfields and winding pathways  to get to the home of the 100-year-old woman who was my “hermana” in Christ? Her stooped back and tired eyes. Her toothless grin as she reminded us that she would see us again one day… in heaven.

These and many other images fill my mind as I try to take in last week’s trip. I turn the memories over in mind as my worlds collide and I try to get back to life here.

It’s amazing really. This capacity for relationship that God has built into our hearts. That I could come to love a people in a short span of days. Love their way of life and their language and their families. This range of emotions and experiences that we can have in such a brief time. That is a God-thing. A bit of His capacity for love, lived out in His people.

“God I do remember the people of Oaxaca. But, more importantly, You remember them. You have loved them with an everlasting love. Them and people in every nook and cranny of this vast world.  Help me to love like You do and to always remember that life is much bigger than my little world. Help me to remember them.”