I took a 40 hr. bus ride, then hiked for about 50 miles to find myself on a mountain top, in the pouring rain, picking leeches off my boots and legs, running across a fresh landslide that disappeared over the edge of a cliff, to be standing on a path with a woman I’ll never forget. My two national partners and I had spent about a week looking for a UUPG that was very difficult to locate. We were making our way down from the top of a large mountain.
There was another small footpath about to intersect the one I was currently walking on, with an elderly woman, who was likely in her late 70’s, about to join me at the connection point. I told my translator, “Let’s attempt to share the gospel with that woman.” As our tired steps got closer to each other, I smiled at the woman to the best of my ability and said, “Namaste,” even knowing how disgusting I probably looked and smelled. She greeted us back in her local language, and we all fell into a single file line with her in the front and me taking up the rear.
I had taught my translators a gospel tool using their hand earlier that day and noticed they had their hands stretched out pointing at their fingers in front of them sharing Jesus to her. As I was focusing on not falling to my death from the 6-inch path carved into the mountainside we now all walked on, I began praying for the interaction that I could not understand a word of.
After about twenty minutes, I began hearing the woman get louder and louder with her responses and noticed her increasingly aggressive body language. Wondering to myself what was happening, I just continued observing. My translators continued speaking to the woman in calm voices to not make her angrier as she was flailing her arms and giving sharp toned responses. All I could do, and felt I should do, was watch and pray.
We rounded a boulder hanging from the mountainside to see a small mud structure with a simple tin roof, which became obvious was her home. She walked up to it and began angrily moving things around near her front door, leaving her back to us to make sure we knew she was done with whatever conversation had just taken place. Still confused, I turned to my translators and asked what had just happened.
They told me they had gotten through the hand gospel and was in the process of sharing that trusting in Jesus Christ is the only way to Heaven and to have eternal life there. That was the moment she became enraged on the trail. Apparently, this woman was a widow, whose husband had just recently passed away in the last year. She had no family living with her, her children were long gone in some bigger town seeking a better life away from the village, and she was alone in this little mud structure that the world will never even know exists.
