When I first met Leeza, I remember thinking how calm and kind she was. Always cheerful, always with an encouraging word, constantly doing little, helpful things for others.
I heard Leeza's story at the airport yesterday. We rode the bus over with Jordan and Zick, waited for an incoming team to arrive, sat in the shade, and talked.
Leeza's story starts in Barbados. Her grandparents were born there and moved to the States to provide a better life for their ten children. Brooklyn, New York became home. Leeza says she, her siblings, and lots of cousins were very protected growing up. The neighborhood kids would come to their gate, peek through the bars, and say, "Why don't you come out and ride your bikes in the streets?" But Leeza's parents knew it wasn't safe in the street, so the children stayed at home.
But things at home weren't safe either. Leeza's father was abusive, and that combined with her identity as an outsider in New York, made Leeza painfully shy growing up. She remembers one night when she was five, hearing her mother calling her name again and again. "Leeza! Leeza!" When she crawled out of bed to see what was wrong, she saw her father beating her mother. She didn't know what to do, so she ran into another room and waited and cried. Outwardly, life wasn't too difficult. But inwardly, Leeza didn't know who she was. Her grandmother had started a church in Brooklyn, and the family was "Christian." But it was more a list of rules for Leeza than anything else.
Entering high school, Leeza switched from a Christian to a public school. There, no one really seemed to care - about grades, about morals, about anything. The same was true in college. Leeza became friends with a girl who introduced her to a new scene. Drinking, smoking, partying. One night, Leeza got in a tense argument with a guy she'd known for years. From her window, she called the police to come to her house, but when they came, she said everything was fine. She was the one being abusive, not the other way around. That incident made her realize that she was becoming exactly what she had grown up with - exactly who she didn't want to be.
From that point on, God stepped up His pursuit of Leeza. She got expelled from college, her grandmother (whom she was very close with) died, she couldn't find a purpose for her life. God used these things to bring Leeza into a personal relationship - not just a knowledge - of Him. One Sunday morning, He told her to get up and go to church. As she walked past church after church, He kept saying, "No, not this one." Until she came to a very small church with so few people that the pastor was basically preaching just to Leeza. There, she stayed for a semester, and God used that time and place to grow Leeza close to Him, to show her Himself.
Since that time, Leeza has gotten involved with teaching a Sunday school class, intentionally meeting with fellow Christians, and growing in the disciplines of fasting and prayer. God called her to Haiti through the family of Christ that He is growing her up in, and we have been blessed by her joyful, willing spirit here.
