Meet my friend Portia. I met her in March during street team. She was helping her neighbor who is renovating her house.
Portia has been coming to our Hope Africa office for some time now, visiting our prayer room for much needed prayers, counsel and love. She told me: "I always feel so much better after [they] pray for me and can sleep." She also said how she feels "happy and able to not focus on everything that is going wrong for a few hours" after receiving prayers from our staff.
Portia has a 6 year old son, who's father chooses not to be in the least involved. He wanted nothing to do with the child since he found out Portia was pregnant. You see, dads don't have to help their children financially here as they do in Canada. They can just pretend they don't have them, leaving the women to take care of their children alone.
Portia lives with her son in a small shack with no running water, no fridge & hardly enough space for the double bed they share. When I visited her, there was no place to sit inside, so we ended up chatting outside, sitting on the ground.
Without a job or a way to make money & desperate to be loved, this leaves Portia at the mercy of not-good-for-you-men. It's not hard to understand why a woman like her would stay in an abusive relationship(s) "just not to be alone" or for the few dollars this person might provide.
Helpless situations birth hopeless choices.
For Portia, her life is at a cross road right now. We have offered for her to join our programs at Hope Africa, so that she can learn skills and get a job. During her time with us, she would also grow as a person, and learn to stand on her two feet better. She would meet Jesus in a new way as well. But for many students like Portia, when their lives have been in pieces for so long, it's not as easy as one would think for them to take hold of the hand that is trying to help them. Truly help them.
There are always more obstacles than we can foresee. Some real, some not. People like Portia are so used to things not going their way, so used to failure, that sometimes it's easier not to try at all. Especially when it sounds too good to be true.
After discussing our programs and having her promise to come on the following Monday, the day our Life Direction course started, we left at peace. I felt confident that she would come, despite the obstacles, which we had talked through (I thought).
But Portia didn't show up on Monday. And it is hard for a person like me, who's never ever faced the kinds of challenges she has faced, to understand why not? I want so bad for her, and many like her to know freedom from poverty. To be able to stand on their 2 feet and tell those no-good-men to get lost. To hold their heads high. To feel loved by the King of Kings.
Because they are indeed loved. And completely loved. And as I write this I sigh. A LOT. Because I don't know the answers to my questions. I don't know, I don't know, I don't know. To my knees I fall and pray and ask my Papa for help, on behalf of all the people, like Portia, who are suffering, feeling their obstacles so heavy on them they can hardly see past.
With hope I say this story is to be continued. Because you bet I will storm up to heaven's door for this woman and I know you will too!
