“But we have no water,” she lamented.
“We have no money. If we had money, we could have water. But it costs $300 to install water. So, we have no water.”
“My daughters are working down in the city. They are working in shops. They earn money for food. But there's no extra.”
“There's just no money. We get our water from the neighbors. We can cook and wash clothes. But there's no shower. There's no sewage.”
“If my husband were still alive, there'd be money. But he traded our house for a car, so he could be a driver. The next day, he crashed the car and died. No car, no house, and my husband dead. Left me with four kids. Now, if we have money, we use it for food.”
I came to this widow on 15th street to ask her if she could host one of my Servant Team members for four months. We want the rent we pay to go to families in need, so houses need not be fancy and are usually quite sparse. Our requirements for housing are basic-a private room for the Servant Team member, a bathroom with a hot shower, and boiled water for drinking. But this widow does not even have running water. According to our guidelines, she cannot be a host.
I thought about this widow last weekend during a retreat for the workers and volunteers from Casa de Esperanza, our center for women in prostitution. We began our retreat by exploring lamentation, a topic mostly unexplored by the modern church. I think that, though a large part of the Old Testament consists of various types of laments, the church today likes to emphasize the happy parts of the Christian life. The prayer of Jabez parts. The John Piper parts. But lamentation precedes joy for many. Lamentation is a cry that the world is not as it should be. So at the retreat, we lamented, sharing our deepest sorrows.
“Our friends should not have been raped. They shouldn't be prostituting to feed their children.”
“My father should have told me he loved me. Just once.”
“I should not have had to run away from home to go to school.”
“My brothers and sisters shouldn't have been beaten.”
“I shouldn't have been kidnapped when I was a child.”
On and on. I cried through every story. It was cathartic to mourn the tragedies of life. Not to push them under the rug. Not to try to fix them. Just to mourn that the earth is not what it was created to be.
But, thank the Lord, we spend the next day imaging the world as God would have it. I imagine that God wants my friends who prostitute dancing down an empty red light district, singing the song of Miriam. I dream of lots of yellow roses and green parks in this dirty, dusty city. I hope for a time when the women who prostitute are teaching each other the Scriptures.
Finally, we celebrate. During the last day of the retreat, we celebrated that Christ has already broken the chains that bind the women. He has sent us to proclaim that salvation, and like Moses, to lead them into that promise.
While I lamented with the widow on 15th street, my optimism makes it hard to stay in lament for long. I'm imagining how we can help her install water and sewage, so that the next team I receive will have the pleasure of eating her potatoes and getting to know her beautiful daughters.
My Lamentations
It hit me last weekend that I won't see most of my family and friends until next July. That feels long and lonely. Since I still haven't found a church, my community is not as wide and deep as it usually is.
My Imaginations
A group of us have been meeting as a financial planning committee to discuss economic options for our women. My dream for about a year has been to start a coffee shop as a discipleship and training ground for this largely illiterate and uneducated group of women. Now ideas are being tossed around and progress is being made.
My Celebrations
I found an apartment! It is large, cheap, and has windows that face the afternoon sun. The huge kitchen is perfect for my semi-disastrous cooking experiments. In a few weeks my Servant Team will help me paint it from pink and turquoise to more subdued colors. It may be the smell of the eucalyptus stumps I'm using as nightstands, but it already feels like home.
Thank you for your continued prayers and correspondence. Letters and emails make you my favorite person.
Cara Strauss
c/o Heather Coaster
Casilla 25022
El Alto, Bolivia
Love in Christ,
Cara Strauss