Found in Translation (29 page)

“And what had to happen before I gave you enough helpers to get the job done?”

“I had to acknowledge that the project was Yours.” I thought for a moment. “I had to be obedient. I had to depend on You.”

“You’re ready, Kim. Head out to the mound.”

I felt like hugging God but fell to the ground instead. He raised me to my feet.

“By the way, Kim, you’ll only need one hand and one arm out there.”

I started to protest. “But, Lord, sometimes the ball is hit to the pitcher ….”

“Do you trust Me, Kim?”

“Of course I do. But don’t you want Anjelita to stand beside me and help?”

“You’ll need helpers, and Anjelita will be one of them. But she won’t play such an important role this time.”

“Any way You want to do it, Lord. Just let us win this game … for Your glory.”

The dream ended, and I realized I was still praying.
Lord, I’ll do what You want, but You’re the only One who can make it work.
I mouthed those words silently as I accepted God’s challenge to do the impossible and depend on His promise of help.

I felt peaceful and yet excited at receiving my real assignment. God had commissioned me to do what I was dying to do from the beginning. But He wanted me to do it in a way I wouldn’t have thought of or attempted on my own. I couldn’t back out if I’d wanted to. I’d made the commitment.

I couldn’t keep from adding a postscript to my prayer, though. “Please don’t expect me not to laugh about this.”

Day 9

W
e had more helpers than usual, and we could see additional ground with each passing hour. We would complete the litter cleanup today. Competition for the honor of removing the final handful of trash was ferocious—in a good-natured way.

The composition of each snowtrash drift had been a mystery when we started. But unlike snowdrifts, made of flakes that bond together as a mass, small bits of visible space separated the objects in the churchyard.

Anjelita and I had made a game of looking for items of interest as we worked. Whenever one of us discovered a cup handle or half an ink pen or the bill of a baseball cap, the finder held it high and paraded back and forth in front of the church to the cheers of the current helpers.

If the finder could make the object wearable, she ended the parade by putting it on and returning to work. It was a finders, keepers game, and I wasn’t too old to enjoy anticipating the reaction at church when I came home with some trinket of unknown origin.

But a toothbrush stamped M
ADE IN
U
SA
on the handle had been my best find so far. The storm had battered it so badly I couldn’t guess at its original color. I was thinking about taking it home as a joke.

Anjelita had been slightly more successful than I. But only another child would consider a ragged shirtsleeve a treasure.

At least our little game kept both of us alert as we searched in vain for a treasure of immense value. We hadn’t found one yet, and I couldn’t imagine succeeding on the final day of our cleanup.

I wondered if everything in the yard had come from elsewhere. Or did the tornado bury some of the villagers’ possessions here, too? It didn’t matter. Nothing was intact. Even the dilapidated toothbrush was bald. The twister made sure of that.

We spotted another rotting tire but couldn’t reach it yet. Hiding unsuccessfully behind it was a glittery object I assumed to be just another piece of broken glass. Those fragments required the most time and care in disposing of safely. I wouldn’t let Anjelita handle them, and I was super-careful. I didn’t particularly relish the thought of slicing and dicing any of my body parts.

I was slight enough already.

This piece of glass glittered so brightly I thought it might be a mirror fragment. After working my way to a spot near the front wall of the church, I leaned against the rotten tire and pulled out my treasure.

The old necklace was remarkably intact. It was in far better shape than anything else we’d come across. I thought it was toy jewelry at first, but the chain was too long. On closer examination, I recognized that it was too precious to be a child’s, anyhow. It looked like an antique.

An unusual gold setting held a colorless jewel firmly in its claw. The stone itself perplexed me.

I’m unusually good at recognizing gems—I’d spent months of my life window-shopping in jewelry stores—but I was clueless about this one. It wasn’t a diamond, although the cut looked similar. The small stone’s reflective power astounded me. No wonder I mistook it for mirror glass. As I turned the necklace this way and that, a rainbow appeared on the ground in front of me. Ah. So some unknown jeweler had fashioned the stone into a prism.

I wasn’t sure at first whether the chain and setting were real gold, but a few drops from my water bottle and a little buffing against my pants leg made the necklace shine like my fourteen-karat class ring. If I was right, its worth was beyond my ability to estimate.

The necklace must have been strong to survive its frenetic trip to the churchyard without major damage. The chain and setting contained only a few tiny nicks that gave them character. Although one facet of the prism had a slight scratch, the stone didn’t appear to be in danger of cracking or falling out.

Any fashionable woman would wear magnificent jewelry like that with pride. How the owner must have grieved her loss. A necklace like that was probably a family heirloom—priceless and irreplaceable. No matter how much I wanted to find its rightful owner and return it, I had little hope of doing so.

I wondered if the owner had survived the tornado. I wiped my eyes with my sleeve as I considered the irony of an inanimate piece of jewelry outliving its owner.

Lord, please bless the owner if she’s still alive.

Anjelita had gone for water a few minutes earlier. I was dying to show her my find. She’d be thrilled that one of us had finally found a real treasure.

When I put the necklace on, I felt regal. Had it ever belonged to royalty? Perhaps this wasn’t just a family heirloom, but one small part of a larger treasure. No matter how wild my imagination ran, I’d never learn the real story.

My necklace—yes, it was mine now—was heavier than I’d expected. It was … substantial in its feel, although exquisitely feminine in appearance. I wondered if its previous owner had been as petite as me.

A smiling Anjelita appeared a few yards away. She had an open, half-empty bottle of water in her hand and an unopened bottle under her half arm for me. She’d spilled water on her pale blue dress running to see what I had. I stood up just as she reached me, the necklace dangling handsomely against my filthy T-shirt. I might have been royalty out slumming.

I’d seen Anjelita happy many times that week, but her smile and eyes brightened more than ever now, and she squealed a number of times with delight.

But then she started crying so suddenly I thought she’d either cut herself or one of Santa María’s abundant creepy-crawly critters had bit her. I checked her legs and bare feet for cuts and bites but didn’t see any blood or signs of injury.

Sometimes even another woman can’t interpret the mood of a female who’s in the midst of a crying jag. I looked into Anjelita’s face but saw no trace of pain or sorrow. Neither did I see anger or frustration.

She simply looked—how should I say it?—less happy than when she first saw the necklace. Her reaction was illogical. Why would a necklace make her cry? Did it remind her of some trinket she’d lost in the storm?

Her tears insisted that there was more to it than that.

Just as suddenly as she’d begun crying, she quieted down again. I could hear an occasional sniffle, but her initial joy at seeing the necklace had vanished. She looked baffled. Uncertain.

Beyond that, I couldn’t read her. Her battle appeared to be personal.

“Anjelita, isn’t it beautiful—uh, es bella?”

What a pathetic use I’d made of the few Spanish words I’d mastered. I heard too many to write down more than a few of them. Would a more committed effort—or at least a more disciplined one—have helped now? And would it have made my God-assigned task any easier?

Then again, if God expected me to do more than make a fool of myself, I’d need all the faith I could muster and let Him do the real work. I would just be His mouthpiece.

But I wasn’t going to be Aaron speaking for Moses. God would do the speaking as if He were a ventriloquist and I His dummy. I’d feel like one, anyhow, and I still chuckled at His plan.

But that didn’t solve this problem with Anjelita.

“Es bella?” I asked her once more.

She didn’t seem to be listening. The necklace held her complete attention. She extended her hand toward it but withdrew it again as if the necklace was too hot to touch. After she did that several times, I took her small, soft hand in mine and—with the gold chain still hanging from my neck—I let the pendant touch her fingertips.

Her eyes sparkled. “Una
collar,”
Anjelita whispered in a tone I can only describe as awestruck.

“Ko-YAR?”

“Sí,
mi
collar, mi
prisma.”

She bent down and wrote collar in the dirt. That must have meant “necklace.” Prisma sounded like “prism.” She must have assumed I understood mi. Unfortunately, I ignored that most important word.

My little sister’s fingers explored the necklace as if caressing the face of someone her family has just found after giving up hope. But heartbreak tainted her smile.

Since every discovery belonged to the finder, the necklace was clearly mine, and I looked forward to taking it home as a souvenir. Whether I would wear it, time would tell. I questioned whether its elegant beauty would look appropriate on a frame as petite as mine, though.

Then I realized how badly Anjelita wanted the necklace. She didn’t care that I’d found it, not her. The selfishness in me wanted to scream, “This isn’t yours. Don’t you dare ask for it.” The self-righteousness wanted to preach, “Don’t covet someone else’s belongings. I’ll keep this trinket to teach you to be satisfied with what you have.”

With what you have?

I lived in a spacious house with a garage that was roomier than Rosa’s new cottage. Even my bedroom was bigger. I owned so many unneeded clothes I didn’t have room for more. A number of trinkets—some fairly valuable and most of them unused—crowded three jewelry chests on my dresser. How many purchases had I never even removed the price tag from?

I had abundance—overabundance.

And standing before me was a pretty, young child with nothing to call her own but the clothes on her back. She fondly handled a pendant I had no earthly use for. She acted like it was important to her. Immensely more important than it was to me.

Melting in shame at my selfishness, I bent my head forward so I could slip the chain off and let it fall around Anjelita’s neck. Bowing before Jesus couldn’t have been more humbling.

Anjelita’s mouth dropped open in shock.

She threw her arms around me, said,
“Muchas gracias!”
over and over again, and took off at full speed. She ran only a couple of yards before coming back and giving me the tightest hug imaginable.

“Mamá!
Mamá! Mi collar! Señorita Keem … mi collar!” she cried out as she started searching for Rosa.

Less than two minutes later, Rosa arrived at the churchyard with Anjelita’s hand in hers. Her smile was radiant, and she threw her arms around me and started talking in the most excited Spanish I’d heard since coming to Santa María.

I wondered if she was praising—or at least thanking—me for giving Anjelita the necklace. She may have been trying to explain something. Unable to listen fast enough to catch any of the familiar words she used, I had no idea what was going on.

But I’d definitely done the right thing.

W
e completed the churchyard cleanup around two o’clock that afternoon. I was especially indebted to the senior adults and the children. Both groups put in nearly full-time hours after becoming involved. I went to each individual and expressed my thanks the best I could.

Even though everyone else had only helped part-time, we wouldn’t have finished without them. I thanked each team member personally. I didn’t know who’d helped and who hadn’t, but that didn’t matter. Any victory in Santa María was a team victory.

“I understand a little how Jesus may have felt when He wept over Jerusalem,” Neil said as only he could. “I’ve shed the tears of a lifetime in Santa María, but I’ve smiled the smiles of a lifetime, too.”

It was almost time to begin my special assignment, and I still giggled at the thought of it. I didn’t have the confidence or imagination to come up with an idea like that, and the Devil—whether personal or conceptual—wouldn’t have suggested it.

But I needed to do one small thing first. I hoped God wouldn’t mind.

Acres of wildflowers grew on and around the girls’ field. After borrowing a hand tool from Rob—I don’t know what it was, but it had a pointed tip—I led Anjelita to a lush concentration of flowers. I knelt on the ground and maneuvered the tool blade gently to free the root ball as well as the flower. I dug up several more while Anjelita supervised with a look of curiosity.

Although she looked glamorous in her necklace, the chain was so long the prism nearly reached her waist. After motioning for her to bend down, I doubled it for her. I didn’t want her to lose it now.

I just needed a flower or two to demonstrate what we were going to do. Then we’d dig up as many as we needed.

Anjelita’s face lit up when she saw that the hole I was digging in the churchyard was big enough to plant the dirtball in. I should’ve known how quickly she’d catch on. Against my better judgment, I let her use the pointed hand tool to dig spots for additional flowers. My hand hovered just inches from hers as if I could move fast enough to prevent accidental injury.

I shouldn’t have bothered, though. She’d been careful picking up litter, and she’d been careful near the flames. She treated the sharp digging tool with similar respect. Together we pressed the ball of roots firmly into place and covered them with dirt.