Remembering Maria

It seems fitting to remember Maria Mavuso during Passion Week. Maria went home to be with the Lord last month. She was a simple, uneducated widow who lived in desperately poor circumstances. Unlike some of the other SHBC volunteers, Maria spoke almost no English, so our previous mission teams weren't able to learn much of Maria's story. It turns out that she, like other SHBC volunteers, also had AIDS. We can only speculate about how she acquired the disease, but a likely scenario is that her husband, as is often the case with Swazi men, had multiple sex partners and brought AIDS home to Maria (and possibly other wives).

If I were in Maria's situation, I would probably stay home in bed, immobilized and victimized, allowing my family and friends to care for me. But Maria didn't allow her poverty, lack or education or AIDS to keep her from serving others. Every morning Maria got up, walked miles to collect firewood and water, then started a fire and cooked for hours so the Dwaleni orphans could have a nutritious mid-day meal. And in addition to these community orphans, Maria went to her simple home every evening and cared for two more children who had been orphaned by AIDS.

This Easter, as you think about the challenges you face which might be preventing you from living sacrificially, consider Maria and the sacrifices she made in spite of her desperate situation. When I think about Maria and the way she she lived, "being Jesus", she encourages me to do more of the same.

A mutiny in the body?

"At the central railway station in Madras, India, lay a beggar woman more pitiful than the others I saw there. She had positioned herself alongside the stream of passengers hurrying to catch their trains. Businessmen with briefcases passed by her, as did wealthy tourists and government officials.



Like many Indian beggars, the woman was emaciated, with sunken cheeks and eyes and bony limbs. But, paradoxically, a huge mass of plump skin, round and sleek like a sausage, was growing from her side. It lay beside her like a formless baby, connected to her by a broad bridge of skin. The woman had exposed her flank with its grotesque deformity to give her an advantage in the rivalry for pity. Though I only saw her briefly, I felt sure that the growth was a lipoma, a tumor of fat cells. It was part of her and yet not, as if some surgeon had carved a hunk of fat out of a three hundred pound person, wrapped in in live skin, and deftly sewed it on this woman. She was starving; she feebly held up a spidery hand for alms. But her tumor was thriving, nearly equaling the weight of the rest of her body. It gleamed in the sun, exuding health, sucking lie from her."

Rubbing off . . .

When I was a little girl, my grandmother’s house had white washed exterior walls and a courtyard with a fence that was also whitewashed. When my sister and I played in the courtyard the whitewash would rub off on our clothes. In fact, it seemed like just hanging out near the whitewash would cause it to rub off on us. We were pretty oblivious to the influence of the whitewash on our clothes while we were busy playing. It wasn’t until we came inside and were away from the courtyard that we noticed how the whitewash had affected us.

Isn’t how it is with things that rub off, good or bad? It’s not very often that we try to get something on us, it just happens. That is what happened to me last month in Swaziland.

Shelley, Patti and I just returned to Piet Retief and the home of our friends the van Wyngaards. We spent 5 days in the South African Cape teaching and talking about solar cooking and pasteurizing water using WAPI’s. The weather was cooperative and we actually cooked Mealie Pup perfectly, starting from cold water. Only an African woman knows what a big deal that is. Even though this area has sporadic sun in the summer, we determined that with just 100 days of sun per year (a very reasonable estimate), a family could save $1600 Rand by using solar instead of parafin or electricity, school fees for several children. Thanks to Grahamstown and Kirstenbosch Rotary clubs for hosting us and working to see that the introduction of this technology is helpful and sustainable.

Sightings

There is a little red hawk that I see on my way to work. He sits on the top limbs of a dead tree or a street light along the junction of southbound highway 41 and westbound 180 (Fresno residents will know where I’m talking about). I first spotted him about 6 months ago. After that, I started looking for him every day, right after the McKinley exit. I keep watching until my exit; Blackstone / Belmont. I find him about half of the time, and because I find him so regularly, I expect to see him. I assume he’s somewhere nearby.