Serving Others

Last week I finished reading Tracy Kidder’s new book called The Strength in What Remains (Kidder also wrote Mountains Beyond Mountains about the life of Paul Farmer-also a great read).  In his new book, Kidder follows the life of Deo, a refugee from Burundi.  Burundi is situated just below Rwanda and, although I knew that Burundi is one of the poorest nations in the world, I did not know that the ethnic violence that erupted into genocide in Rwanda also occurred in Burundi.  Deo managed to eventually escape to the US (with $200) and, through many trials, nightmares, and perseverance, he managed to attend college and then medical school.

Here is one of my favorite sections of the book after Deo has returned many times to Burundi and is working on building a medical clinic in a remote village.  The following quote is directly from Deo.

“This past summer, we needed some help to make a road that goes to our site passable.  A friend of mine told me, ‘Well, Deo, there’s a great Belgian construction company that builds roads in Burundi and Rwanda and the Congo,’ and I was so excited.  So I went to talk to the representative of the company.  He sent someone to look at the road and estimated a cost of at least fifty thousand U.S. dollars.  Not to pave the road, but to just widen it and make it passable.  I went back frustrated, wondering how to tell the Kayanza community this bad news.  As I was explaining this to them, one woman with a baby crying on her back said to me, ‘You will not pay a penny for this road.  We become so much sick because we are poor, but we are not poor because we are lazy.  We will work on this road with our own hands.’  The next day a hundred sixty-six people showed up with pickaxes, hoes, machetes, and other tools.  One of the volunteers was a woman who came to work with a sick child.  When a friend of mine and I looked at the baby, we saw that the baby was sweating.  I then asked the mother why she came to work with a child that sick.  And she said to me, ‘Well, I’ve already lost three children, and I know this one is next, whether I stay at home or come to work here.  So it’s better for me to join others and make my contribution, which hopefully will help to save someone else’s child, who will be sick but alive when you have a clinic in Kayanza.’”

Reading this passage again reminds me of James 1:27.  How about you?

God Bless,
RJ
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