Victorious

The following entry is Jenitta's story--a story we hope to put on the Body of Christ Ministries website with the desire of sharing the ways Jesus Christ has been faithfully victorious in Jenitta's life; the life of a woman who has faced adversity and countless trials, but remains to be one of the most thankful and peace-filled women I've ever been priviledged to meet.

Victorious

In the coolest parts of the morning and evening, when the sun is still tucked away somewhere distant beyond the curve of the earth, Jenitta sits cross-legged with clasped hands, or clapping hands, on a pillow of sand, her sari pulled as a covering over her head in prayer. Occasionally I walk by and see her—enamored in worship—and if I get close enough, I can hear her voice. Warm and honeyed, it sounds pure—filled with paradisiacal innocence and delight. The voice of a woman in love with Jesus.

I met Jenitta three years ago in India when she took me on a “tour” of Rameswaram. We packed ourselves tightly in a motorized rickshaw, sitting side by side, our knees almost touching and her face smiling while I winced several times as we almost clipped the edge of a tree or a wandering cow sauntering carelessly in the congested road. I don’t remember Jenitta saying more than three or four words that day, and when she did speak, it was in Tamil. Unable to communicate, we exchanged superfluous amounts of smiles and laughter while she pointed out sites of interest around the island. We rarely saw one another after that day other than the moments I caught her worshipping and praying on her cushion of white sand just a short walk away from my room.

When I returned to Rameswaram for the second time just weeks ago, Jenitta’s eyes caught mine during a Sunday church service. In a soft voice filled with familiar gentility, she greeted me in English. In the three years I had been away she had learned an array of vocabulary words and phrases that carried her swiftly through our simple conversation. She welcomed me back with kisses on the cheek and squeezed both of my hands with her own until my fingertips were red from her grip. Though our interactions were few, I had developed a genuine love for this woman and a deepening admiration for her character.

My admiration only grew nights later when she showed up at my room after hearing I was sick. For three hours she hunched over me, skipping her dinner to faithfully stroke my fevered forehead like a mother, her lips continually moving in prayer. As time passed, Jenitta’s daughters moseyed in and joined, all praying out loud at once—their prayers intermingling like strands of a braid. Feeling bathed in love and care, my heart was moved by Jenitta’s relentless prayer for me, a near-stranger.

After conquering my brief sickness, I decided to visit Jenitta’s home to thank her. “Are you sure it’s not too late to barge in?” I asked Tiffany, another American serving here in Rameswaram who is dear friends with Jenitta and her family. “No, no,” Tiffany assures me, “I go over this late almost every night.” Tiffany and I linked arms as we walked barefooted to Jennita’s house, the hems of our saris just barely grazing the rock and sand beneath us. Tiffany pointed one finger forward, “Here we are,” she said, reaching her hand for the thin door. “Here?” I asked in a tone of shocked wonder, “this is Jennita’s house?” Her home was a humble hut no larger than my bedroom. The frame was covered in woven coconut leaves, browned from the heat. The door was a slim sheet of metal, bowed and contorted in areas, leaving a wavy surface in one corner and a flat finish in the other.

We entered the hut, sand spilling on to the concrete floor as we propped the door open. Tiffany explained that the floor used to be entirely sand until just recently when Body of Christ Ministries purchased cement to be poured as a floor covering. One steel bed frame stood alone in the center of the room with three or four pillows stacked on the far side. “Does your mommy sleep here?” I asked Anila, Jennita’s oldest daughter. “No, no…” Anila said quickly, “we sleep on the bed, mommy sleeps on the floor.”

Jennita asked us if we wanted coffee, and before we could say “yes”, she was squatting in the far corner of the hut, throwing a bundle of sticks on to an open flame and preparing coffee with shaved chicory root. Smoke billowed and clouded around her face as she brushed it away, batting the air with her left hand and stirring the coffee in a stainless steel bowl with her right. I looked closely at Jennita’s blackened fingertips, her skin peeling slightly around her nails from constantly cooking over heavy temperatures.

As Jennita swathed in a cocoon of soot and smoke, her four beautiful daughters sat lined against the grass wall nearest to the door, tracing shapes and Tamil letters in the sandy entrance. Each of them told me their names—Anila the oldest, followed by Abila, Daphnaya, and finally little Beulah, the youngest by five years and the only girl with a pixie-short hair cut. Beaulah smiled, her white teeth glowing in the dimly lit room like a row of little stars. “Beaulah’s the imaginative one,” Tiffany told me while laughing. “If you come out here in the afternoon you can watch her playing ‘school’ as she points a stick at the trees, pretending they’re her students.” Beaulah turned her face in embarrassment, giggling into the sleeve of her nightgown. The older girls laughed with her. Beaulah grabbed a tiny piece of chalk between two fingers and started “teaching” us how to write her name by tracing the Tamil letters on the back of their door, using it as a make-shift chalkboard.

“Beaulah,” I asked, “how did you get your name?” The older girls immediately chimed in without prompting. “Her full name is Beaulah Praise the Lord,” Abila told me. “God gave mommy her name from Isaiah 62.” Jennita walked over to finish the story, carefully holding the rims of two steaming cups of black coffee. Pulling up the hem of her nightgown slightly, Jennita cozied herself up against the back of Anila, her hand lovingly rested on Anila’s leg. “Having so many girls in India is seen as a curse,” she told me slowly, her daughters filling in any English words she stumbled on. Jenitta continued to explain that in South India, the second baby girl born is called “the daughter born to the grave”, because it is widely believed a daughter is better off dead than born to a poor family who cannot afford a dowry for her marriage. A third daughter born is an even greater travesty, and a fourth is the curse beyond all curses. “When I had my fourth daughter, everyone told me that the gods hated me and that our family was cursed,” Jenitta recalled with a tone of anguish. “My husband was an alcoholic and the entire village blamed his drinking problems on me having four female children. But I knew that Jesus loved my baby and He gave her to me for a reason. So, I named her Beaulah from Isaiah 62:4.” Tiffany pulled a Bible on her lap and began reading, “The nations will see your righteousness, and all kings your glory; you will be called by a new name that the mouth of the Lord will bestow. You will be a crown of splendor in the Lord's hand, a royal diadem in the hand of your God. No longer will they call you Deserted, or name your land Desolate. But you will be called ‘The City of God’s Delight’ and your land ‘Beulah’; for the Lord will take delight in you…as a bridegroom rejoices over his bride, so will your God rejoice over you”. Little Beaulah’s smile beamed as she looked at her mom and repeated, “Isaiah 62:4.” It was obvious she was proud of her name and story.

Moved by Jenitta’s faith, I asked her, “When did you come to know Jesus?” She gripped Anila’s leg, “When I was pregnant with my first baby, I gave my life to Christ. When I was pregnant with my second baby, I was baptized.”

“And what about your husband?” I asked, “Did he ever know the Lord?”

“My husband did not know Jesus,” she tells me. Jenitta went on to share her full story.

Jenitta’s husband, Nelson, a native Sri Lankan, was from a Hindu background. Just before their marriage, he converted to Roman Catholicism, the majority religion of her family, though he never truly followed one or the other. Soon after their wedding, Jenitta and Nelson moved in to a tiny hut on the backside of Jenitta’s parent’s house in a town just miles from Rameswaram. There, Nelson developed an excessive drinking habit and started severely beating Jenitta.

Years into her marriage, Jenitta became seriously ill and couldn’t leave her bed. She developed a lump on her chest and eventually visited a government hospital where she received free treatment, since they had no money to afford regular medical treatment. The doctor told her the lump was most likely cancer and had to be removed immediately. With no money to her name and a husband who spent all of their family funds on alcohol, Jenitta was answerless. One night after Jenitta’s husband slugged the side of her head, leaving her unconscious. Abila and Anila, the oldest of her girls remember thinking she was dead. Motionless on the floor, Jenitta distinctly remembers a vision she had, like she was dreaming. Before her, she saw a tangled forest, black with looming darkness that she was entering by foot. Filled with fear, she walked into the mangled assemblage of trees, moving deeper into the caliginous void. As she reluctantly inched into the darkened woods, she remembers hearing a loud but gentle voice saying, “You are not the only one going in to the forest. I am going with you.” Jenitta knew it was Jesus speaking to her. Perplexed, she asked back, “But once I go in, how do I return?” Jenitta thought maybe she was crossing the threshold of life and death. Just as she asked Jesus her question, she saw an image of Jesus’ giant hand shining with brilliance picking her up and placing her into the center of His effulgent palm. With one swoop of motion, Jesus removed her trembling body from the ominous forest, placing her in an area saturated in light and the presence of His comfort and blessing. It was this vision that gave Jenitta a new wave of strength and vigor to survive.

In the midst of her breast cancer, with the inability to access treatment, Jenitta stayed at home, resting and filling herself with God’s word. She watched a series of filmed lessons from a nearby Bible college, the International School of Ministry through Body of Christ Ministries in Rameswaram. One of the lessons was on the healing ministry of Jesus. Deeply moved by the words spoken, Jenitta prayed for Jesus’ healing touch on her cancer until she fell asleep. The next morning, she stood up and ran her hand over the area of pain on her chest. All of the painful pressure—and the lump itself—had disappeared! After this full healing experience, Jenitta traveled to Rameswaram to attend the Bible college and share her miraculous story, hungry to gain more knowledge and teaching on God’s word. Jenitta found a new outlet in ministry and began ministering by foot in Rameswaram during the day and attending Bible college in the evenings.

Two years later, Jenitta celebrated her graduation from Bible college. Her celebration was short-lived as it was followed with her husband becoming increasingly ill. Every night his condition worsened. Jenitta began praying over her husband while he slept. She saw a vision of an expansive mountain with a white cross in the foreground reading her husband’s name “Nelson Kumar”. Jenitta pieced the vision together. The only large mountain nearby was four hours away in Madurai, the same place where the closest hospital was. She knew in her heart her husband was dying. She prayed with desperation the same prayer Jesus prayed in Gethsemane, “My father, if it is your will let this cup of suffering be taken away from me. Yet I want your will to be done, not mine” (Matthew 26:39).

Jenitta faithfully brought her husband to Madurai to be hospitalized. After finding out he was suffering from liver failure due to his massive drinking habits, Jenitta prayed that God would be gracious. She asked the Lord to give her husband forty more days to live so that he would have the opportunity to give his heart to Jesus. After thirty-nine days of vigorous intercession, Jenitta’s husband prayed to receive Christ. The very next day, Nelson passed away. Jenitta recalls looking him in the eyes just before he died, his last words muttered emphatically were, “There is victory in the blood of Jesus!” Moments later, Nelson took his last breath. Before his death, Jenitta’s husband promised that if the Lord kept him alive, he would go in to full-time ministry with his wife. God had been faithful to Jenitta’s request of graciously giving her husband more time on earth, but His ultimate will didn’t include Nelson Kumar living. With full assurance in God’s will and four girls to provide for on her own, Jenitta kept moving forward.

After Nelson’s death, the entire extended family wanted to bury his body in a Roman Catholic graveyard. Part of the Roman Catholic tradition in South India is for the widowed wife to grieve, without leaving her home, for two full years. Knowing this extended time of mourning would compromise her ministry, and having a heart to see her husband buried in the Body of Christ Church she was attending in Rameswaram, Jenitta prayed fervently that her relatives would agree to Nelson’s burial in Rameswaram. The relatives agreed, but reluctantly, to Jenitta’s burial desires. After agreeing, Jenitta’s parents told her she had to transport her husband for his burial and that since he was gone, they no longer wanted her living near them. To have an unmarried daughter with four children to support was an immeasurable burden. Jenitta was asked to leave immediately.

Homeless, Jenitta, by faith, took her girls and her husband’s dead body by taxi along the four hour drive to Rameswaram, his head resting on her shoulder the entire way. There, she buried her husband near the Body of Christ church. Sarojam Paulose, “Pastor Amma”, heard of Jenitta’s desperate situation and was moved by her dire need.

“We want to build a home for you on the Body of Christ campus,” Amma told Jenitta. Jenitta was driven to tears. In overflowing thankfulness she heard Jesus’ voice quietly promise, “I care for my children. I will take care of you.”

At thirty six, Jenitta’s new life was beginning. But, as a widow with four girls in India, she felt hopelessness creeping in quickly. Thoughts began bombarding her mind—what would she do for a living, how would she support her girls, where would money come from? Just as questions were pelting her conscience, Mandri, a man working in the Body of Christ Ministries’ office, visited Jenitta’s small, thatched hut. With simplicity, he pointedly instructed her, “You have two choices. You can do nothing, or you can do something.” Moved by these direct words, Jenitta began ruminating the question through prayer, deciding she wanted to continue in the ministry and have faith that God would provide her every need if she was obedient.

Jenitta’s prayer for provision was met abundantly—with no money to pay for her daughter’s education, she waited for a miracle. Little by little, sums of money began appearing at her doorstep. Here and there people were giving financially until the exact amount was provided for schooling. God began moving the local church Believers’ hearts to give, and enough money arrived for a whole year of education for all four of Jenitta’s daughters. Ever since that first year of provision, God has continued—by one way or another—to take care of Jenitta and her family.

My glass of coffee long finished and my eyes wearied with tears, I listened to the miraculous ending of Jenitta’s story. Jenitta slowly rose from the sandy floor, gently removing her arm from Anila’s leg. Beaulah had long since fallen asleep, her body sprawled over sand and concrete. Abila and Daphnaya sat head to head, smiling as if their mother’s story was just told for the very first time. Jenitta lifted the tin coffee cup from my hand and stacked it carefully inside Tiffany’s. Carrying them to the corner kitchen area, she told us over her shoulder that Romans 8: 35-37 has been the theme of her life. “Can anything ever separate us from the love of Christ?” I opened my Bible and began to read, “Does it mean He no longer loves us if we have calamity, or are persecuted, or hungry, or destitute, or in danger, or threatened with death? No, despite all these things, overwhelming victory is ours through Christ, who loved us.”

I re-read the verse in my head several times over. Minutes later, Tiffany stood up, hugging each of the girls goodnight. Jenitta walked us through the thin metal door, our heads ducked slightly as we passed under the drooping dried coconut leaves hanging like icicles from the roof. Reaching her hands for mine, Jenitta gave my palms a final squeeze. I squeezed her fingers right back.

Tiffany and I waved at the girls huddled in the doorway until we were out of sight, then a short distance down the trail we split—Tiffany broke off at her doorstep as I walked, exhausted to my room. Tired as I was, I imagined Jenitta was still awake—probably huddled on a bank of sand somewhere outside her home, her hands clasped in a gesture of thankful prayer.