Ermelinda - a quiet compassionate leader

Ermelinda – a quiet compassionate leader

Ermelinda is a beautiful person in every way. She is a Mam Mayan mother of 6 which includes adopted Victor (6) and her husband Raoul who is an elder in a local Mam church.

We had met Ermelinda the year previously when she had brought her daughter Brenda to our clinic in town. Brenda had been previously diagnosed with a heart condition. We later prayed with the whole family at their house and when she revisited our doctors. They were both reasonably sure at thisp oint there was nothing wrong with her heart at all.

This whole family had also prayed for my knee as it was swollen and sore from all the climbing. It was a great honour to be prayed over in Mam, Spanish and English all at the same time.

As I thought about the encounters with this family during the next year I was convinced they could provide the key to our ministry excursions into the mountains surrounding San Pedro Necta in a future trip.

This actually proved the case. As soon as possible after our return in 2005, I took a small team up the steep hill out of San Pedro to their house. The person I spotted as we approached was Ermelinda’s daughter Brenda ( on the right in the photo) . She quickly ran home to alert them all of our arrival. After the inital greetings we asked Ermelinda if she would help us. She said that she would need to look after the needs of her family first. Coming from her, it was clearly understood that this was a mature person aware of her responsibilities, not someone who was in any way trying to manipulate the situation. So we saw a couple of her kids and then also her 2 grandmother’s and various sisters and sister-in-laws.

Later she brought to her house the more desperate people in the neighbourhood: a mother with 3 children, one who was blind living without a house of her own; another mother came with a mentally handicapped son. She was extremely distressed, suffering from severe migraines and the physical assaults of her eldest step daughter. We also met a mother who was herself deaf. She had 6 kids and didn’t know their ages. She had a lot of pain in her ankles and feet. This seemed hardly surprising as she was so small and her kids were all young and she was carrying one on her back. We were able to provide her with some good running shoes after measuring her feet and returning the next day.

On our third visits to Ermelinda’s house, after she had looked after everyone else including some of the most desperate cases in the neghbourhood, she finally consented to an eye exam for herself as she had mentioned some blurred vision in one eye especially. Our eye doctor then proceeded with a thorough exam as he did with all the people he saw.

Ermelinda is truly a beautiful woman and an inspiration !