Our 17-year old son started college this fall.   In an e-mail last week he mentioned that he will have difficulties purchasing a ticket to visit his sister and brother who attend college in Maine for the Thanksgiving break.  It seems that one has to be 18-years of age to buy a bus ticket to travel from Massachusetts to Maine.  He wondered if we should fax a letter to the Greyhound Bus Company from Africa authorizing him to purchase a ticket.  For a short while I was disheartened. Our family should be together for Thanksgiving not apart on two continents.   A father should be there to pick up his son from college….and his parents to welcome him home.   I dwelt on the unfairness of it all. Then I thought of Amina.  

Amina recently posed for the picture above while waiting to be seen in small clinic in the hilly region of Uvira on the Congo-Rwanda border.  She was sitting alongside 50 or 60 other women waiting for her baby brother to be seen by the doctor on duty.   Amina is ten years old. While most children her age attend grade school, she stays at home to care for her siblings; a 4-year-old sister and a 5-month old brother.  The baby had a fever during the night.  Attempts by a community health care worker in their village to start an I.V. failed so they were told to take the child to the regional health center in town (a 3-to-4 mile walk down a hilly ravine) to be seen.  Her mother couldn’t afford to miss another day at work  (harvesting cabbages in the field for ~50 cents a day) so the job of seeking medical care for a sick baby, while providing care for another sibling, fell on Amina’s shoulder.    There was no note from home …only a sick baby and a plea for help from a t10-year-old girl.

In the United States my college-aged son needs a note to purchase a ticket to come home from college…while in the foothills of Congo a mother sends a 10-year-old girl, who will never attend school, four miles down a rocky path to solicit care for her 5-month old brother.

Sometimes the contrast between our sending country (USA) and our host country (DRC) is so vast that it seems surreal, but there is nothing surreal about illiteracy, poverty, and disease.  These are in essence the distinguishing characteristics between our two homes; not so much culture, language, race…or even religion, but the conditions of living.   Those who we serve are members of the same body of Christ…but members without the same resources and opportunities.   Jesus reminds us that the poor will always be with us…but we are also reminded that true religion is looking after the needs of the widow and orphan.  

When you support foreign missions you provide tangible resources for families like these who may never know the giver, but will cherish the gift. 

Our son, then age 16 distributing medicine during an outbreak of Ebola in the interior of Congo (Luebo, DRC Oct 2007)

With determination and hope from Africa,

Bill Clemmer