She makes the room feel heavier, heavier with her presence, her wit, her wisdom, her smile, although she might not even notice, but one can tell if she is in the room and it is with her silent and simple way and shy eyes that she captivates you and confirms the fact that she is different, she is special and she was the speciallady that he found over 17 years ago. I met him, heard him the first time at our local church, he was so eloquent in his preaching that I was blown away and the passion for God’s word breathe life to me and God’s power,thirst for God was spitting from his pores. I immediately became a fan, a fan of Pastor Moses Gezimiel’s preaching and back in 2004, I think it was that year, he had been the main preacher for the youth retreat, I was pregnant and was not able to attend and I am not sure if she was present, but I wondered about her, about who she was because after all a man of God of such anointing had to have a wonderful woman of God.
I do not think she knows this or maybe she does, but when I had my son Lucas back in 2004, I had a c-section and was sent home after the 5 days one is suppose to be in the a c-section, going home with your newborn baby. I arrived home with a house full of guests making chicken soup, cleaning, laughing and I was in pain and I slept in our old blue armchair crumbled up like an aging prune, and as one by one left, the fever got worse and worse and worse until it was 104 and I was shaking like a pressure cooker, the ambulance came, and little baby Lucas was left home and I headed back to the hospital. I would lay on a stretcher for the night and my husband sat on al aluminum chair, barely awake. Then I would go to a second stretcher until I finally got a room at 5 pm the next day. It was torture for me and for Max and little did I know, I would spend another gruesome 5 more days to come with blank stares, lack of answers and indifference to my health condition which kept deteriorating.
On the second or third night, memory is a bit faded for it felt like forever, I did not want to lie down for my breathing was so slow I felt as if I did lie down, I would not wake again, I waited for my husband to arrive to the hospital afterwork but he was so tired on that cold winter night that he just fell asleep in my uncomfortable hospital bed when he arrived. The nurse, a friendly Slavic woman had chatted for hours about her life, younger boyfriend and work and when the cold dark hours came, and my slow breathing scared me, I buzzed her and asked if she could call the resident who was the doctor on duty for there was something wrong. She looked at me and said: it is 4 a.m, I will not wake up the resident on call, you are just anxious, try to go to sleep! Tears fell down my face and the lack of air persisted and the frequent visits to the bathroom for some air had wiped me out so I sadly obeyed, I laid there thinking about Lucas who was with my mom and young siblings and how I was missing his first days at home. An hour and a half later came the the techs who always did their rounds as they had been doing for the last 7 days, reading pressure and did the pulsox test where they examine the oxygen level going to your heart. I was so tired and sleepy that I could barely see him, it was dark still. I just heard, take a deep breath and I said I can not and I did the breathing that I could and then they finally heard our pleas. A team of doctors rushed in and they came for tests, immedeatly ordered a pulmonary treatment to pump air to my lungs and that consisted of two needles in my wrist, which did nothing, then came the oxygen tanks, then the doctors said it was blood clott and got needles in my stomach and other doctors said there was no need for those needles and the argued amongst themselves. Right after came the students, the students who had heard about my mysterious case and asked me the same questions over and over and scratched their heads and wrote down notes on their clipboards and seemed excited with the incident.So there lied a 26 year old woman who had been in perfect health, now in an oxygen tank with 2 kinds of bacteria in her blood which I contracted during my stay there, on three types of antibiotics for they did not know which one would kill the bacterias in my blood, with liquid in her lungs and later I found out with an enlarged heart as a result of this mess. But I say all of this to show my fragile state and to show what it meant when he along with my Pastor Tenison Sales walked into the door that night to pray for me and to tell me that the church had done a 24 hour prayer clock where a couple of people would pray each hour til the 24 hour period would pass. They said I might have to spend Christmas there and I kept soaking into my sadness and accepting that circumstance but that visit meant a lot to me, it lifted my spirits andgave me hope. I left the hospital on December 22, 2004.
So now the Preacher I so admired had also participated in a very important moment in my life, even if it was just a small visit and I wondered about her even more so. It was a over three years later, that I would see her with her baby in a cloth baby carrier at another church where her husband was preaching. I tried snagging a picture from far away. The room was different that night because she was present and I was so curious to befriend her but it was such a short time. Then earlier this year at our women’s conference, he was scheduled to be the main preacher, and the room was different again, she had come with their adorable son, a son he always talked about and said he had waited 15 years for. I said hello, took some pictures from far away but it was as short weekend and I left early for I had to work. Then I found them on Orkut, online socialmedia Brazilians prefer to use and she saw me, she saw I was a photographer and more importantly a blogger and twitter user and to my surprise so was she. Our virtual worlds had come together and we immediately clicked and I felt like she was an old fried I had lost touch with and now we are back where we left off, so much to talk about especially with her interesting blog which discusses her as a Brazilian, being a mom in the USA, the blog is mostly in Portuguese but I recommend a visit to my good friend Marcia’s blog, http://sermaenaamerica.blogspot.com. She blesses my life and I do not even know how, but she does and although we live far, social media has bought us a little closer. She was here in August and I got to do some shots of her, Pastor Gomes and little Gabriel on the beach and today we spent a couple of hours at Starbucks just chatting away, snapping some shots, talking about life, love, faith, and all the in bet-weens. I loved the visit and little Gabriel who is only 1 needs to come and teach some manners to my boys for he is so well behaved and cute, I mean what other 1 year old stays two hours at a Starbucks very well behaved and happy. Um…any volunteers? Well this post is long over due and I feel blessed to have friends and brothers in Christ who are genuine and who their very presence changes the atmosphere.
Here are some shots of Little Biel which is his nickname and me and Marcia.
I asked where Biel was and he was pointed to himself, the cutest thing ever…
