Read this in the paper today.
Ugandans Demonstrate What it Means to Give
There have been many tales of kindness to Hurricane Katrina's victims. But not like this one.
On Thanksgiving Day, the New Orleans Times-Picayune wrote about the women of Kireka, a slum clinging to the rocky hillside looking down on Kampala, Uganda. The men who live there dig boulders from the soil, and the women pound them into smaller chunks they sell for construction purposes. They make $1.20 a day. For breaking rocks with their bare hands in the African heat.
When news of Katrina's devastation reached Kireka, women there - most of them dying of AIDS - told Rose Busingye, a Ugandan nurse and relief worker, that they wanted to help.
Two hundred Kireka women pitched in. After a few weeks, a U.S. aid worker was summoned to the slum to receive their gift: nearly $900. According to Nurse Busingye, those women believe that "those people who are suffering, they belong to us. They are our people. Their problems are our problems. Their children are like our children."
They belong to us. There's talk in the air of "Katrina fatigue," of Americans feeling tapped out from donating money and time to help the hurricane's victims. And yet, when you read about women like these AIDS- ravaged slum dwellers half a world away smashing stones to send pennies to suffering Americans, you might feel very small indeed. This time of year, most Americans celebrate the birth of a man who, according to Scripture, was once in the temple when he "looked up and saw the rich putting their gifts into the treasury; and he saw a poor widow put in two copper coins. And he said, 'Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all of them; for they all contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty put in all the living that she had.'''
The widow of the gospel account lives today in a Ugandan slum. Two hundred such widows who have nothing. And whatever our beliefs, if we fail to respond in kind to their stunning example of charity, we show ourselves much the poorer. Please be generous this holiday season.
Ugandans Demonstrate What it Means to Give
There have been many tales of kindness to Hurricane Katrina's victims. But not like this one.
On Thanksgiving Day, the New Orleans Times-Picayune wrote about the women of Kireka, a slum clinging to the rocky hillside looking down on Kampala, Uganda. The men who live there dig boulders from the soil, and the women pound them into smaller chunks they sell for construction purposes. They make $1.20 a day. For breaking rocks with their bare hands in the African heat.
When news of Katrina's devastation reached Kireka, women there - most of them dying of AIDS - told Rose Busingye, a Ugandan nurse and relief worker, that they wanted to help.
Two hundred Kireka women pitched in. After a few weeks, a U.S. aid worker was summoned to the slum to receive their gift: nearly $900. According to Nurse Busingye, those women believe that "those people who are suffering, they belong to us. They are our people. Their problems are our problems. Their children are like our children."
They belong to us. There's talk in the air of "Katrina fatigue," of Americans feeling tapped out from donating money and time to help the hurricane's victims. And yet, when you read about women like these AIDS- ravaged slum dwellers half a world away smashing stones to send pennies to suffering Americans, you might feel very small indeed. This time of year, most Americans celebrate the birth of a man who, according to Scripture, was once in the temple when he "looked up and saw the rich putting their gifts into the treasury; and he saw a poor widow put in two copper coins. And he said, 'Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all of them; for they all contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty put in all the living that she had.'''
The widow of the gospel account lives today in a Ugandan slum. Two hundred such widows who have nothing. And whatever our beliefs, if we fail to respond in kind to their stunning example of charity, we show ourselves much the poorer. Please be generous this holiday season.
