When thinking about personal desires, Lana, one student spending two months in North Africa this summer, suggested a handful of natural answers: material possessions, financial stability, a new job, a good social position. However, while visiting families in a poor area during an IGD social outreach, she discovered that “God can bring joy and peace in a home that has none of these things.”

One day, Lana accompanied her teammates to a needy neighbourhood, where they were invited into a house that, from the outside, “looked like a garage”. Climbing over the garbage piled in front of the door, they walked into a windowless room, furnished sparsely with a single bed and fan—home to a widow and her two daughters.

Every day the woman sorted trash for recycling in front of her house, earning approximately three euros (3.3 USD) per day.

“This is her job. She is illiterate and marginalised,” Lana explained.

Lana and her colleagues told the woman they wanted to pray for her. Then they asked another question: “If you had the possibility to fulfil your three biggest desires, what would those be?”

“The first one, as we all expected, was [for] her daughter to be healed,” Lana recounted. The next two answers surprised her, though.

“I want everybody to be healed,” the woman continued. But she couldn’t think of a third wish.

“How can it be that somebody in her situation thinks about others? How can it be that somebody living in [those] conditions, in garbage, without a normal job, doesn’t wish [anything] else?” Lana wondered.

“I am thankful for what I have because others don’t have as much,” the woman responded. She thanked them for bringing light into her dark house and for the food bag that she received. 

Lana pondered the encounter after they left, considering the woman’s contentment despite her poverty and the deep lessons that she learned from her.