A Very Special Love

     Today, I visited my first village in Fiji.  Sitara (another "intern") and I climbed onto a bus and headed out into the countryside.  The bus rattled along progressively deteriorating roads and crossed a precarious bridge, finally stopping beside a tiny primary school, the beginning of the community that was our destination.  We got off the bus and started walking up the dirt road where we were greeted by a smiling 20-year-old girl.  She hugged us warmly and walked us up another dirt road to her home. 

   

      She and her whole family live in small house around the size of my living room and dining room combined.  The walls are made of clay/plaster and the roof is sheets of tin that leak like crazy when it rains.  Her mother, stepfather, five siblings, herself, and her baby son are all stuffed in this little abode. Her stepfather is a sugarcane cutter, and she and her mother have their hands full with a household of kids.  Sometimes they go hungry.  And yet, her hospitality to us today was overwhelming.

     We sat on a little mat outside while she told me her story.  A number of very painful and destructive things have happened to her, which I shouldn't share for her security.  She tells me all this calmly, twirling a blade of grass in her fingers.  She smiles at the end of her story, and I can see her joy.  After such profound pain and abuse, she came to know Christ and returned home, with her baby.

     Now they both live with her mother and abusive stepfather.  Those in her community condemn her for her past and consider her crazy for her new bold faith.  She tries every day, she said, to serve her family and show them the love of Christ, how her life has changed.  "Yesterday, my horoscope came across the radio," she told us.  "It said, 'You will receive very special love from your life partner today.'  I looked around me:  no life partner, only screaming babies.  And later, my mom yelled at me and went to bed angry.  I thought, 'Oh, this must be the very special love my horoscope was talking about,'" she joked with a little laugh.  "But I know that God loves me, and that is all I need."  

     She shines so brightly.  I want them to see that I have changed, she said.  "Christ came to us, and though people hated Him, He still showed them love and their lives were changed.  How am I any different if I only hate those who hate me?," she explained as we walked by a house where a girl gave her a strange, patronizing glance.  "If I love them instead, maybe their hearts will be changed."         

         

[The countryside near the village.]

[A delicious lunch.]

And, for your viewing pleasure, the video below was taken while I was working on this blog.  :)

I thank God for all I'm learning here each day. 
Love you all, 
Brittany