Can you hear her singing?
Long before Paraiso had a big church building and a priest living in the community, on Saturday mornings way up in Cafe de las Mujeres (which is about 2 miles away) you could hear Doña Enma ringing the old church bells and singing praises to God. To this day, she has a powerful voice and naturally commands the respect of people in this town.
Surprising abilities:
Over the decades she has demonstrated remarkable leadership qualities, by organizing groups and dealing with problems that came up in the community. Today a man came in from the campos asking for medical help. When told that he was unknown by the present pastoral team, he disappeared for a few minutes and returned with Doña Enma. She commented that the gentleman truly did have a long history of medical problems and that she would help him out and send him around to different people in the town so that together they could raise money for him to purchase medicines or go to Barahona and the regional hospital.
Remarkable intellect:
Whoever tells you that a poor woman who never went past primary school and now is over 84 years old...that such a person would have no ability to sum up a sermon or create powerful prayers based upon the gospel readings...simply has not met a person like Doña Enma. Without missing a beat she can interpret a homily and sum up its main message at 7:30 am and then adapt the thoughts to a prayer. Her voice is strong and steady; her thoughts are easy to understand.
Doña Enma the Church:
It is easy to make the mistake of identifying a church with an imposing building. But this amounts to an exercise of intellectual laziness. Most people, if you ask them where is the Catholic Church in Paraiso, would give you directions to the visible structure. Yet if we do a little digging under the surface observations, we discover a living Church.
God blesses us by way of people:
When we ask God to bless the Church, He does not respond with structures. Instead He blesses us with people who come forth as prophets, teachers, healers, preachers or a little of all these gifts. The people of Paraiso have been singularly blessed with an extraordinary woman of great courage and consistent example. It so happens that she is one of those multi-talented folks who can not be described as having one or the other gift.
Can you hear her singing?
The next time you are in the area and are climbing up the very steep road towards Charco Blanco, why not stop and listen carefully. In your imagination you can begin to hear that one solitary voice, crystal clear, calling out to an entire population: come let us praise the Lord!
