Entry 15: For Oli

In a rural village in Guatemala, there lives a woman named Oli Golia. There is nothing outwardly special about her. Her hands are dirty from work, feet calloused from a life spent on a dirt floor, eyes cloudy with age. Her home is made up of plastic chairs and wood cabinets held together by rusty nails. Her clothes are handmade, worn down and smelling of smoke from a woodfire she cooked dinner on. Her children sit around her, her grandchildren climbing over her shoulders and into her arms. Oli Golia has lost her husband and her strength. She falls multiple times a day, and struggles to overcome sickness. She is tired from years of poverty and doing everything she can to help her and her family get by.

One day, a girl walks into Oli Golia’s home. The girl has lived a comfortable life, but she yearns for something more. She knows God, she loves Him, but she is still looking for Him in the world around her. She has come to Guatemala to continue to seek God, to discover His heart for the world and for Her. She has felt fear for the future, and shame for the ways she’s fallen short. She knows that God has blessed her, but sometimes she is too focused on her blessings to see clearly the God who gave them to her.

And so this girl walks into Oli’s home, but she does not see a tired old woman. She sees a faith that radiates beyond physical strength. She sees a loving nature that remains persistent despite trials. She sees a resolve to serve no matter the means to do so. She sees a woman who has lived in deep poverty, and wakes up every morning giving thanks to God. She sees a woman who has been abandoned and hurt, and yet continues to love unconditionally.

The girl says to her, “I am here because I want to be the woman that you are someday.” And the girl and Oli pray together, thanking God that they met, that for a brief moment in time, they saw Him in each other. The girl walked out of the house, but before she did, the woman embraced her with tears in her eyes. She said something in Spanish that the girl didn’t understand, but she did hear a “thank you”.

While I could try and recap everything that happened the two weeks I spent in Guatemala, meeting Oli Golia seems to be the most evident display of God’s heart for me while I was there. I know that God was in the laughter of the kids I got to play with at VBS. I know that God was in the walls of the home I helped build. I know that God was there every night at worship. I know God was moving in every conversation on the rooftop. I know God was at the top of the volcano I hiked. I know God was in the testimonies I heard each day. However, ironic as it may seem, I saw God most clearly in the quiet, steady obedience of a woman who served God no matter how little she had. She loved the Lord, and her life reflected her devotion to Him. She inspired me, she encouraged me, and all she did was sit across from me and tell me her story.

The biggest lesson I’ve taken away from Guatemala is this: Every day, no matter where I am or who I am surrounded by, I have an opportunity, and it is the same opportunity that Oli has. It is an opportunity to rely on God. An opportunity to serve Him. An opportunity to dive into a deeper kind of love. An opportunity to live in obedience to God’s purpose for my life. Now, with every trial that I go through, every hard circumstance life throws my way, every situation I don’t know how to handle, I will think of Oli. I will remember the faith that she has. I will remember the ways that she held true to God’s word when she had every reason not to. I will remember that what I go through is shaping me to become a woman like her. I will remember that every day, she has the same opportunity I do.

I hope that one day, I will see Oli again in heaven. I hope that she remembers me, the girl who came into her home that Tuesday morning. I hope that when I see her, I will have lived a life where I took that opportunity. I hope that I can tell her how much she meant to me.

But until that happens, I just keep saying to myself, “One day I’m gonna grow up to be just like Oli.”