Jym Shorts

I was sitting in the back of the bus watching my fellow team members’ heads and bodies bounce back and forth as we drove through the dirt and rock roads of Bujumbura, Burundi. It was warm with no A/C and closed windows so the dust wouldn’t fill the bus or our lungs. We pulled to the side of the “road” where every Burundian child from the neighborhood quickly greeted us. We were traveling to different widows' homes that day. The organization we traveled with, Sister Connection, built these widows' homes, but these specific widows we visited still did not have monthly sponsors. 

The entire community of children followed us, touching our skin and practicing their English “good morning” (it was afternoon), and none of them seemed to notice how crowded the narrow path was. At the end of the narrow path, we took a left, which led to a narrower path that had a brick building to our left and a significant drop-off to our right. Our feet were carefully placed on rocks and dirt so as not to slip off the roughly one-foot wide path. Josh and I held our 3 boys (9, 7, and 4-years old) close as the crowd gathered around us. Suddenly we stopped. I looked up and saw a shack. I thought, “Surely this isn’t the house” This is a shack.” 

Her smile was contagious and her joy was deeply genuine. Jeanne had her arm around one of her young children the exact same way I had my arm around my own child, but hers wasn’t for protection so they wouldn’t fall off the cliff!

We asked Jeanne if she has been able to find a job. She said she makes bricks and carries them whenever there is a local project or she fetches water for other people and her children help her so they can make more money. If she makes bricks and carries them for ten hours a day she will make 2,000 francs, a whopping .97 cents. If she carries water she makes 200 francs or .10 cents, but if her children are able to help they can make .40 cents. A meal to feed her whole family beans, local vegetables and cassava costs her 5,000 francs ($2.44).

I stood there as a mom, in tears, as I listened to the difficulty this fellow mother faces with her three children. And yet I saw the God she worshipped, and He was much bigger than the God I know. I knew there was only one God we both served, but somehow her view of Him was so different from mine. The housing initiative through Sister Connection is a very big project—it costs $750 to build a home for a widow. Many churches, individuals, and small groups have built over 2,500 homes. But Jeanne was unsponsored.

Jeanne and her children are sincerely grateful for the roof over their heads and for the safety of a door that locks, but I saw their struggle to feed their children. Jeanne’s oldest son is nine-years-old and she has worked hard to keep him in school because she knows what an education means. I know with a sponsor, someone to commit to $35 a month where 100% of that money goes straight to her, she could feed, clothe and send all 3 of her children to school. This mother could go from hoping to have enough for one meal a day to eating three meals a day. $35 a month, what do I buy that I don’t need? What could I sell? What could I “sacrifice”? Sacrifice suddenly looked a lot different on that cliffside in Burundi.