Day 6 Alone

I left the house for my daily walk at 5:30 p.m., rejoicing in the still beautiful day even though the sun would soon be starting its descent in the west. I headed down to a new neighborhood that we literally saw being born. I used to walk there often and pray for whoever would one day live there and walking the now populated village brought back a certain nostalgia. Back in our neighborhood, I stopped to visit a new neighbor. Her daughter has hosted our church's Bible study group on different occasions and I knew the mother was from an evangelical church. Our talk roamed from a time she worked in the home of a muslim family on the border of Brazil and Paraguay while her husband worked on the famous Itaipu Dam to her helping out in her church's soup kitchen to help our town's Indian population. She is 55 years old, but seems somehow older than me (!) and she's excited because she and a group of older women are studying. She knew how to read, but didn't really know how to write correctly. Now she loves practicing writing names in her agenda and proudly showed me how she was doing. "I only studied until the 2nd grade," she said. "I had a family to take care of and had to work." One day in class the teacher asked the women to draw stick people. "I had never drawn before, but I was the first one done and the teacher gave me a 100!" Other women didn't even know how to draw a circle for a head.
Her daughter complains that Mother is never at home, but how can she help it? Her sun is rising and she has a new lease on life!