If you follow me on social media, you’ve seen a couple posts about a woman named Dimbalalay.
Dimbalalay is a lady who a group of us visited every other day during our time in Ethiopia. She lives in a mud hut village about a 25 minute walk away from the HOPE campus.
Our first visit was at the very end of December and we continued to go until the end of February. What first prompted me to go was my friend Sarah. She felt like she had a calling from the Lord go out into the village.
In Harbu Chulule, there is one road. And out of our compound you can go left, or right. The first time that Sarah went, it was just her, Grace and our ministry host Milto. They went right. Long story short, it didn’t go well. So the next time they went, Milto said to go left!
They went one time and they had visited a woman named Balynish. My first time we went, we tried to go back to her house but she was at the market. So, we walked around to other some other huts down the road to see if anyone was home, but no one was, except for Dimbalalay!
Her hut, her son and daughter-in-law’s hut, and their “guest hut” were all inside this little fence made of sticks. So we walk into her fenced in area and her daughter in law greets us with a sweet, gentle smile. Dimbalalay was inside of her hut, laying on the floor on a thin mat. She was sick. She could barely lift her head to greet us. She kept coughing and was in and out of sleep. We didn’t ask if we could pray for her because in that culture, they would have turned us away immediately. So I sat in her hut and stretched out my hand towards her and just whispered a prayer. A big prayer. A prayer of healing! I asked that the Lord heal her body of all of it’s sickness.
We started to leave and Milto asked her if she had money to go to the clinic. Dimbalalay’s job at the market got her around 15 Birr a week which is less that 50 cents. And it was 100 birr to go to the clinic. So Milto gave her some money to go to the clinic.
The next week we visited her and she was COMPLETELY healed! She was walking around and had a HUGE smile on her face. And gave us big hugs and kisses.
So every other day for two months we got to go visit her. She is my best friend. She didn’t expect anything from us. She just wanted to spend time with us. She didn’t speak a lick of English. But she would just look into my eyes and just talk and I didn’t know what she actually said but I knew. Ya know?
She’s a WILD woman. She sits in the squat position and is always waving her hands all over the place when she talks.
But she is also so so gentle. She has a restful spirit. She knows that she is provided for by the father.
Even though there wasn’t much we could verbally say to her, we could communicate in a more beautiful way! She loved singing and dancing. I made up a song for her and every time i would sing it she would dancing and start singing along!
“Dimbalala, Dimbalalay oh yes we love Dimbalalay. She is small and smart and nice and cute and funny!!!” and She wouis clap and dance and all of the kids in her house would sing along too. It was a small way we could communicate but we just CONNECTED. Man it was beautiful.
There isn’t much more I can say about Dimbalalay. Only because you have to meet her in person to be able to understand her fully. And there is not enough words to describe how impactful she was in my life!
During our last visit, she told us that as soon as we started coming to visit her, she knew that we were her angels. She said that God sent her so much peace and good health for her and her whole family.
It was one of the hardest goodbyes, but one of the sweetest.
Oh oh yes we love Dimbalalay
