Gaudencia

A few weeks ago, Becca, Jonathan and I were introduced to a young woman at our church, Gaudencia. This girl is, perhaps, the most angelic, delightful person I’ve ever met. She was absolutely beaming as she shook our hands for the first time, grabbing our shoulders and touching her cheek first to our right and then to our left, looking up into our eyes, and repeating the ugly Americanized pronunciations of our names in her slowed down, musical Kenyan lilt. I do find it interesting that my diphthongized “Kay-eet” becomes a much gentler “Keht” amongst Kenyans.

I remember her sitting down in our row with us, sharing my hymnal, and jotting down notes on the back of a grocery receipt during the sermon. She had that same inviting demeanor that most Kenyans I’ve met seem to share—a hospitality, I’ve discovered, that my “Northern” upbringing hasn’t given me a natural ease in accepting and enjoying. I’ve found that I missed out on a vital part of my possible socialization process by not being raised as a Kenyan—or, I suppose, growing up in the Southern United States, as Julie’s Louisianan sensibilities often remind me. There was no waving to neighbors across the street from front lawns and porches. No welcome plate of baked goods arrived in the hands of a smiling welcoming committee upon your arrival to a new neighborhood. No friendly waves to or sitting down at a restaurant or on a park bench with a stranger. Gracious, congenial, and sociable living just didn’t seem to be a high priority growing up in central Ohio. Not that Ohioans are unpleasant. It’s just that we don’t seem too eager to chisel out a chink in the protective walls (erected, mind you, in the name of “privacy” and “consideration of others’ boundaries”) that we build to offer any unnecessary pleasantries. Not so in this place. I’d always thought that I was a friendly and inviting person, but these people put me to shame.

Gaudencia’s smile spreads wide, and her softness and the gentility of her gestures and airy laugh immediately seemed to contrast sharply against my own demeanor. Upon meeting us, she seemed to talk with us as though we were her dearest friends in the world, telling about her recent travels and training in the hotel management industry in Mombasa. She was eager to learn about us as well, and seemed disappointed when we asked that she join us for lunch that she’d already made plans. Greeting Gaudencia over the next few weeks was an absolute delight—I couldn’t believe how cheerful and glad she made me when she flashed her smile across the lawn as we approached our tented sanctuary.

Last weekend, Jonathan and Becca joined the Bussells and several other members of the Emmanuel Baptist family to make famine relief deliveries of food to several village churches several hours outside of Nairobi. This being the kind of teaching semester that it is, I had opted to stay home and work on grading and planning for the week. Gaudencia had planned to join the group, but she hadn’t met up with the others Saturday morning. I found out last Sunday that Gaudencia’s apartment had been robbed the day before.

Greeting her on Sunday, Gaudencia shared with us the details of what had happened. While she had left briefly to get water to bring back to her apartment, someone had carefully opened her door and taken virtually everything inside. Her clothes, books—even simple toiletry items she’d had on a dresser—had been stolen from her one-room apartment. She had just moved into the compound a week before.

We had sat down together for the morning service and Pastor Weaver had asked our small congregation to speak aloud their prayer requests and praise reports, just as he always does each week. Someone in the crowd mentioned Gaudencia’s break-in, and I watched her shift uncomfortably forward in her seat as the pastor asked her to offer some details of what had happened. She repeated that the robbery had taken place Friday, that most of her things had been taken, and then, very simply, she added that she at least hopes that “the person who did it will receive Christ.”

I must admit that in that moment, sitting next to Gaudencia made me feel incredibly small. Right beside me sat a young woman of incredible strength and character—who, even when all she possessed had been taken from her, found that her sincerest, truest desire was that the person who had wronged her would find grace and mercy in salvation.

And her smile never broke for an instant.