Mosquito Net Joy

It’s amazing how much joy a simple mosquito net can evoke.  I think the mosquito net companies should use this as their slogan: “one net, a million smiles”… or something like that.  Today we joined the staff and some youth in the village in putting up mosquito nets in the widows’ homes.  It was my first time entering any of the homes in the village.  I still don’t quite know how to react, or even what my reaction is yet. 

Seeing homes like this in pictures in magazines or on late-night commercials for “Save the Children” is very different than actually experiencing them with the people that live in them.  It’s very odd, but it seemed so normal yet appalling all at the same time.  There is one house of a woman named Theresa that has particularly stuck with me.  The small room was speckled with lights that were sprinkling in through the holes in the hundreds of tiny holes in the tin roof strapped to skinny rough wooden rafters covered in wasp nests.  There was one makeshift metal bed with a thin blanket and a small bench.  As I was standing on the corner of the unstable metal frame of the widow’s bed I was having a hard time wrapping my mind and heart around what I was experiencing. I don’t have much more to say about that because I don’t really have any words yet to articulate what I want to.

Theresa (right) and another widow we hung up nets for

After hanging up the mosquito nets we prayed with each of widows.  We prayed for provision, for joy, for healing, for protection, and for the Spirit of God to dwell in their homes and in the village.  We prayed prayers of praise for their lives and for what God is doing in and through them.

There is another widow that is stuck in my mind as I am writing this.  She is the grandmother of one of the students at the education center and a true kindred spirit.  When we first arrived to her family’s home she wasn’t there so the family went to go get her.  As soon as she came around the corner and into our view she started stomping her worn, disfigured feet, dancing and raising her arms up to heaven.  I was standing closest to her and so she came up and embraced me saying “mun gode, mun gode Allah” “We thank you, we thank you God” over and over again into my ear.  Then she continued on with her dancing, stomping, smiling, and praising God.  Her joy was such a testament to God’s goodness.

My prayer tonight as I sit here writing this while the widows are sleeping now protected by their new mosquito nets is that they will be praying prayers of praise to Jehovah Jireh.  I pray they will know the love of their Father.  That they will know the grace of their Savior.  That they are being restored and redeemed – reconciled back to their Creator.  I am praying prayers of thanksgiving that we serve a God who sees the forgotten and will raise up the poor to a place of honor.

Grace, Peace, and Love