Water from My Heart (36 page)

For Christy and me, Moises' community has become dear to us. To our hearts. It is the place on planet Earth where the Lord challenges our notions of pretty much everything. Moises has nothing. We have everything. He prays for enough money to buy rice and beans. To feed his grandkids. I pray that the GPS in my truck gets me where I'm going in the shortest, most traffic-free way. He makes less than $2 a day. I spend that on a coffee. Without blinking. He prays for rain for his crops and cows when drought threatens his existence. I complain about our grocery bill. “Did that salmon taste fishy?” During the rainy season, his wife places buckets beneath the holes in her rusted tin roof and guards the pictures. I watch it fill the pool and frown at how it will affect the delicate balance between our chlorine and salt.

But what Moises lacks in stuff and comfort, he makes up for in faith. If God were writing Hebrews 11 today—adding names to the great Faith Hall of Fame—he'd include Moises. In a land where many have lost faith and have little hope, Moises is truly a Moses to his people.

Here's just one recent example: A woman in his church had been bleeding for weeks and in immense pain. The community raised enough money to take her to the hospital because her husband is crippled and lives in a wheelchair. She is both breadwinner and caretaker. The biopsy proved uterine cancer. Advanced. They sent her home to die. “Sorry, can't help you.” As she lies in bed, waiting for disease to do what the mudslide did not, Moises asks the church to fast and pray. So they do. The entire church. No food. No water. After three days, the church comes together for a praise and worship service. From there, several of the elders travel to the dying lady's bedside, where they lay hands on her, anoint her with oil, and pray. When I ask Moises why, he points at his Bible and shrugs. As if to say, “I read it. James says do this. We do it.” So they pray. She feels a bit better. Sits up. Again, they pitch in and return her to the hospital, and the hospital gives her two liters of blood and, reluctantly, a second biopsy. The looks on their faces say, “We already sent you home once. There's no hope for you. You're wasting our time.” Moises and the family wait quietly for the results, which, when they return, inexplicably provide no evidence of cancer. The doctors scratch their heads. “We must have misdiagnosed you.” She's home now. Playing with her kids. Healthy as can be. Ask Moises and he will break open his Bible, point to Luke 8, and say, “God worked miracles then. He works miracles now. Period.”

The Book of Acts says, “Signs and wonders followed those who believe.” Well, signs and wonders follow Moises. With a budget of zero, Moises has planted seven or eight churches and invests his time, encouragement, and leadership in some thirty more. He gives when he has nothing—which is all the time. He is a magnificent practical joker, smiles constantly, loves to sing, is tender with his wife, children, and grandchildren, and calls me
“mi hermano.”
That means “my brother.” To say I'm honored is an understatement of mythic proportions.

The contrast between us has proven this: I'm a spoiled American. I have hot water at the flick of a dial, a smartphone, a truck with AC, two televisions with a couple hundred channels each, an ice maker, cough medicine, a Tempur-Pedic mattress, deodorant, the list goes on. Yet the Lord has used this map dot twelve hundred miles south to reveal another piece of His heart to me. And most of that He's done through the lives and words of both Moises and Pauline.

Pauline doesn't seek the spotlight. Never has. But everywhere I've been in Nicaragua, she's been there first. Checking it out. Making sure. Protecting me. She's the window through which I've perceived this beautiful country and these magnificent, towering, and tender people who've stolen my heart. And when I'm there in that country, and Moises asks me to speak in a church, which is most every night, she is my voice. She translates me to all of them. Without her, there really isn't a me in Nicaragua. And if you ask Moises, her name would be written in Hebrews 11 before his.

Water from My Heart
bubbled up and out of this soup. This love, this laughter, these tears, this pig, these roaches in the outhouse, these mangoes, these whispers beyond the wall. I'd like to think I'm less indifferent but let's be honest: I'm typing this on a new iPad via a wireless keyboard in a car with a seat heater 'cause it's cold outside. David Crowder is singing on the Bose speakers next to me. He is singing, “We will never be the same.”

Let me end with this: About two years ago, Moises needed a well dug on the land where he keeps his cows, so we paid a skinny local to dangle from a long rope for about three weeks. Today, that well is much like the one you've just read about. Moises and his sons use it every day to provide for their cows. Water their plants. You can tug on the rope. Raise the bucket. Soak your head. First time I saw Moises drink from it, he wiped his mouth and put his hand on my shoulder, nodding. He spoke slowly, knowing I couldn't follow him otherwise.
“Agua de mi corazón.”

I turned to Pauline. My face spoke a phrase I have asked ten thousand times. “What's he saying?”

Her eyes welled. “It translates, ‘Water from my heart.'”

But translation and meaning are often two different things. So I said, “But…what's it mean?”

Moises, one hand still on my shoulder, put his other hand flat across my heart. His face close to mine, he spoke. Pauline made it so my heart could understand. “It means that every time he drinks here, he will remember that this water comes from your heart.” I didn't know how to respond to Moises so I just hugged him and kissed his cheek. If I spoke Spanish, I'd tell him that his words washed my soul far more than my water washed his face.

More than fifteen years ago, God took my pen to Nicaragua. Once there, He led my crusty heart to a courageous, tenderhearted woman named Pauline and a humble friend of God named Moises. I've seldom felt so clean.

If there's something satisfying in this story that filled you up, washed over you, that something rose out of a deep place. The kind of spring only God can make—where the tears are clean and rinse the soul. To get there, He had to break through the stony bedrock of my indifference. It took some doing. There was a lot of junk in the way. No ordinary pick and shovel would do. He needed some special tools, which He placed in the hands of Pauline and Moises. Together, they dug a well in me.

I pray the water is sweet. Even more, I pray it tastes like mangoes.

A Life Intercepted

Unwritten

Thunder and Rain

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