A Moment of Revelation

If you were already suspecting that I am crazy, this post may convince you. I offer it as a strange sort of background to the story of Glenda, the recipient of the RAK sewing machine.

When I went to church camp as a teenager, I was never the one to experience Jesus. I never felt saved in the least. I always envied those (mostly) girls who had life-changing events. But much later when I was in the midst of my twenties, I had a brief moment where I connected with God in a way that has happened only once in my lifetime.

I was working in Guatemala for several weeks on a survey of agriculture. My friend Sam, who had a lot more clout than I, convinced the US Embassy to provide us with a car and a driver for the weekend so we could go out and look at farms growing coffee and beans interspersed with corn first hand. We did see those farms, but we also got a good look at some of the most beautiful countryside on the face of the earth.

We had stayed overnight at Panahachel, a small town on Lake Atitlan, the volcanic lake in the picture above. There was something about the lake, especially when the mist hovered over it in the early morning, that seemed almost like a piece of heaven.

We started out the next day and stopped at a high point overlooking the lake. The young Mayan girl happened to be there.

That’s when it happened. I heard the voice of God tell me that I was destined to do something to help humanity some time in my life. Before I could ask important questions like WHAT and WHEN, it was gone and I was simply looking at the shimmering lake once again.

This was 32 years ago. I have carried that experience with me all this time. I came across this picture, which has been tucked away in a drawer.

And what you might ask does this have to do with Glenda?

I learned just yesterday as I took her home after our sewing lesson that she is from a little town that sits on the edge of Lake Atitlan. Her grandmother is younger than I am. I wondered for a moment if the young girl in the picture could have been her mother or someone else in her family.

I will follow this up with a post about Glenda and her newly acquired sewing machine, but for now I am still drinking in the possibilities suggested by this coincidence.