In July,1995, I wrote
this to my granddaughter:
Dear Maggie,
Last year at this
time, day after day and week after week, people around the world watched
television reports and read articles about Rwanda’s civil war.
Over a three-month
period, nearly a million people died unspeakable, gruesome deaths. I nearly
grew faint when I saw pictures on TV and heard details.
A pilot friend of
ours stood beside a river and counted fifty to sixty bodies float past him
every minute.
East Africans have a
proverb: Wapiganapo tembo nyasi huumia—When elephants fight, the grass gets hurt.
When the powerful fight each other, they trample on the weak and innocent.
That’s what happened in Rwanda, and it broke my heart.
Rwanda’s atrocities
also touched our friend, Sue, a fellow trainee during Kenya Safari. I wrote an
article about her experience for this summer’s issue of Wycliffe’s In Other Words magazine.
Sue and her coworker,
Ann, “moved house” to Bukavu, in eastern Zaire, to begin their work
assignments.
They had lived there
only a week when, on their way to church on Sunday, they noticed people
gathered in an open area and sensed tension in the air.
After the church
service, Sue and Ann saw that Rwandan refugees had set up primitive shelters.
By that evening,
hordes of Rwandans filled the dusty roads into Bukavu carrying babies, food,
and firewood. Day after day, the two women watched thousands of people make
their way into town—stunned, exhausted, sick, and malnourished. Some didn’t
even have shelters.
Sue and Ann struggled
with guilt, they said, because they were not refugees themselves, guilt because
they had so much and the Rwandans had so little.
They wept for the
refugees. They prayed for them. They gave them money and food. They befriended
them and prayed with them.
They listened to
weary relief workers, overwhelmed and dazed by the refugees’ anguish. I’m sure
those refugees and relief workers sensed that God Himself reached out to them
through Sue and Ann.
May He bless them
all, especially the Rwandans. (from Chapter 10, Grandma’s Letters from Africa)
I think Sue and Ann acted as God's hands upon earth, doing work He wants us to do. Bless them and their endeavors and keep them safe.
ReplyDeleteYes, Terra, I agree! Bless Sue and Ann! So many others like them work every day around the world helping the needy, the innocent ones. They need our prayers and support.
DeleteThanks for stopping by, Terra.
Linda
I love that proverb, and I loved the response of both Sue and Ann. Would that others would respond to others in the same way, wherever they find hurting people. So much pain and anguish comes from man's inhumanity to man. Sometimes I wonder how it can be that way as it is such inhumane treatment by so called humans. But that is what happens when a person lives in darkness. God bless the work of those that try to get the gospel out to save lives.
ReplyDeleteHi, Penny, you are one of those choice saints who reaches out like Sue and Ann did! You've seen hurting, needy people and you've helped them in practical, important ways--not only with physical/material needs, but with the love of God, too. You're one of my heroes, Penny! :)
DeleteLinda