NEVER DOUBT THE POWER OF GOD OR WOMEN

Damaris owns the Western Motel and RV Park

I’ve learned to never underestimate senior women. To never doubt their strength. Especially ones I meet in New Mexico, the birthplace of the atomic bomb.

We’re staying in a tiny RV park behind the Western Motel in Magdalena, NM. It’s owned by a spritely woman named Damaris. (The name is in the Bible only once, she said. Acts 17. Last chapter.) 

She’s 62 and non-stop, this woman. She runs the motel and RV lot by herself.  I see her toting plumbing supplies, supervising repair of a water leak, directing two men doing odd jobs on her lot. 

I later learn these men are simple men who can’t hold jobs. So Damaris gives them worth. Lets them putter. She tends to them, out of faith. Like she does the community’s children with vacation Bible school every summer.

She’s a seriously faith-filled woman. Who invites me to church. So I go.

Inside the back door of the Magdalena Community Church I see five other older women and two older men engaged in conversation. It’s social hour. So I grab a bottle of water (we're in the desert) and sit down next to a woman named Marcia, who's in her 70s and enjoys creating non-denominational rosaries.  She shows me one and explains each bead in detail. 

She, too, is a faith-filled woman.

We soon usher ourselves into the sanctuary and I notice it is just us. The social-hour gang. No others have come to worship. Where’s the pastor? 

Soon, Marcia lights the altar candle then sits at the piano and leads us in hymns. She then toddles to the lectern and leads us in prayer.

Marcia wears many hats at church.

Then, Marcia, the rosary-making, prayerful pianist, presents the sermon, engaging us in a powerful message on Doubting Thomas. 

I later learn Marcia is also a retired nuclear physicist. Damaris is a political scientist. Another 60-someting woman I met is a physical therapist.

As I said, I’ll never underestimate the power of an older woman. Or the lengths to which faith takes us.

These people keep the church vibrant in Magdalena, NM. The lap quilts come in handy on cold windy days.