An old woman who lives alone is over 90 years old. When I first met her last August, she was wearing a crisp short-sleeved dress, her hair messily tied up in a bun, and a black eye patch hooped around her head. This sister goes out on her own to buy groceries and occasionally steams her own groundnuts. When the weather is nice, she likes to sit in the district park, and the neighbors know her.
The old woman has two daughters, the eldest is in Hong Kong and has not returned in the past few years due to the pandemic. The younger daughter lives in the same city as the old woman, but due to their personality differences and the fact that she is old and a bit eccentric, they usually have arguments when they meet. However, the younger daughter still comes to visit occasionally and usually arranges for meals to be delivered to the old woman, and a nanny comes to the house at night to help her take a bath.
Although the old woman lacked nothing in life, she had a longing within her to be loved. She loved going to church, but her age and the pandemic in recent years made it impossible to go there a lot of times.
Two sisters visited her every week for nearly a year (except during the lockdown), read and prayed with her, listened to recorded sermons, helped her clean, cooked, and even cut her nails.
The old woman was from Ningbo and did not speak Mandarin. She would repeat to people who came to visit her that her house used to be a meeting place, showing them that she had many Bibles and that she had never read a book; she would emphasize that her parents believed in Jesus, even her grandfather and that her eldest daughter was a church chorister in Hong Kong; she would lift up the clothes on her back and show the long scars on her body, saying that God had healed her. She would point out her five milk teeth with pride and draw attention to her partly blackened silver hair; She would tell people to repent and preach the gospel. Occasionally, a young brother would visit, and Grandma would start talking to him about worshipping God and the need for holiness in marriage.
Apart from her personal testimony, she loves to read the Bible, and now that she cannot read it, she plays the Bible player given to her over and over again.
The sister's prayers have become her food; she would pray for everyone who visits her. Whenever someone brings her food, whatever it is, she will stand very carefully at the window and pray to thank the Lord before eating. She always says she wants to pray more wherever she is, on foot or in the car, and to pray for everyone she meets.
Grandma's prayers include the names of many countries. For example, when praying for China, she would use the slogan of the era she lived through to proclaim, "Catch up with Britain and surpass America." She would mention the names of more than 10 countries in five or six seconds: "America, Germany, England, France, Australia, the Soviet Union, Japan, Latin America, India, Vietnam, Iraq, Cambodia (gypsies)."
As she prays, the older sister's voices becomes louder and louder than every other young person present. She ends each prayer with "Glory to the name of the Lord": "Glory to the name of the Lord, glory to the name of the Lord, the precious blood of the Lord cleanses me from my sins, glory to the name of the Lord... " She clapped and sang each time she sang this hymn, and at the end of "Glory to the name of the Lord," she would raise her hands with all her might. She loves to praise, and after speaking for a while, she would break into singing and dance with joy.
- Translated by Nonye Nancy
