com·mu·ni·cate

verb: 1 archaic : SHARE 2 a : to convey knowledge of or information about : make known

Some people's spirits are so alive and potent that they are capable of physically possessing us. Their kindness and intrinsic goodness touches something so deep inside that it becomes indelible - a tattoo imprinted on our hearts.

On Tuesday, my first visit to Missionaries of Charity in Huruma, I met Grace, the woman pictured above. I can so vividly remember the moment I locked eyes with her. It was like seeing hope molded into human flesh.

She rushed at me, embracing me as a mother embraces a child who has returned home. She smelled like milk. Hugging her felt like sighing. I bent over her frail body as she shook with laughter. "Aaahhhhh. It's so NICE to meet you!"

Pushing away from me, she held on firmly to the sides of my elbows, peering through her laughing eye's slits. She wanted to get a good look at me. "Goodgoodgood," she expelled in one breath, nodding up and down excitedly.

Her face took on grave seriousness as she very deliberately and slowly sounded out the Kiswahili for me, "Naaaa-eeeeet-wahhhh Grace!" She spoke her name in a staccato fact, like a child thrusting their arm into the air to answer a question.

On Wednesday, we huddled together in the corner of the concrete laundry room. The staffwomen rushed around us, hurriedly carrying buckets of laundry water, leaning over to mop the floor, preparing beans and rice for the women.

As they buzzed around us like bees, her tiny, wrinkled brown hands rested in my lap and grasped mine tightly as if to quiet the din. Her presence froze time. She had decided that I was a worthy enough pupil, excited to learn, and must be taught Kiswahili from her expert lips.

Her brow would furrow as I repeated each phrase over and over again, staring directly into her chocolate eyes, slightly foggy with the passage of time.

"Two-wehn-day la schooo-lay," I tried. "Twehn-dey la scho-lay. Twende la schule." (Let's go to school.)

I sounded like a person falling down a cement staircase with glass jar full of marbles. A million mistakes spilled out into the room. The entire time I spoke she would lead me through the process of sounding it out, her body bobbing up and down with each syllable, approving or pausing to correct me as I butchered her beautiful tongue.

"eh-eh-eh," she'd correct. "sh-oooo, sh-ooooo." Her lips froze in exaggerated positions, all for my benefit.

Upon leaving her on Wednesday afternoon, I bought my Swahili pocket dictionary. I read over the phrases that my breath had been pushing out with exertion for an hour straight. As I saw how a word was spelled, it was like the synapses in my brain were shortened. Things clicked.

Now thousands of miles away from my expert teacher, I'm just as struck by the power of the gift she gave me as I was by her presence then.

It was as if she understood how much I love to communicate. God put her there to satisfy a part of me that was still present, even in the absence of a common language.

As I searched out this title today, a secondary definition for communicate jumped out at me -

1: to receive Communion.

Grace's communication transcended mere wordplay.

The time she spent with me was akin to taking communion. Her goodness indwelt my spirit. Her generosity fed my soul.

And I left nourished.