The women greeted our van with singing and dancing. They ushered us inside and placed us in the only seats in the house. They continued singing, crying out and praising God at the top of their lungs. They sat on the floor as we introduced ourselves. They shared their stories, their lives. And we shared ours.
They poured God’s love into us with their singing. They held us and danced with us.
These were not women with easy lives.
These were widows. Some had children less than a year old still on their backs.
Each of them was at a different stage in the grieving process, but each of them knew the love of Jesus. Each of them knew that God would provide for them and their children.
One woman had eight children. Eight. Eight mouths to feed. Sixteen eyes looking to her in anticipation, and she pointed them to the only thing she knew would never fail them.
We prayed with them and over them, and as we did, it began to rain.
Rain in Africa is vastly different from rain in America. Everything flooded instantly. The dusty road we had driven on the way there instantly turned into an unforgiving, raging, red river.
We loaded into our mini bus and began the drive back to section 18b in Lilongwe. We drove for about ten minutes before the current became so strong that we had to stop for fear of being swept away.
The children in the village had just been released from school. They were trying to get home while navigating the now treacherous river.
We watched in horror as two of the children were sucked into the raging red waters.
I screamed out… I was helpless.
There was nothing I could do but watch from my cushioned seat in the bus.
Their backpacks were ripped from their tiny bodies and immediately disappeared. The girls bobbed in the red waters.
A man walking down the side of the road grabbed one of the girls and literally threw her to safety.
The other girl had disappeared.
The blue material of her dress became visible, and a man jumped in after her–almost getting swept away himself.
He reached out to her and she clung to him as the red water was coughed up from her lungs. Their clothes now had turned the red color of the Malawi soil.
After a tense few moments everyone made it to safety. It seemed a lifetime, but the whole ordeal only lasted a few seconds.
The two girls stood on the side of the road-turned-river shaking and screaming. Their lives had literally flashed before them.
No one held them. No one dried their tears. And from the inside of the mini bus, I cried with them.
They continued on their way, still crying. As they disappeared from sight I continued to cry.
I cried out to God.
That He would hold them. That, just as He was with the widows, He would become real to them. That they would know their lives were spared because He is watching out for them, loving them, and being a good God.
God is God, and He is good. He holds us when no one else will. His plans for us are better than anything we can imagine. We just have to say yes.
“I have no greater joy than to hear that my children are walking in the truth.”
3 John 1:4
