After buying them breakfast, Isaac and Ranaldo escort me to where their day begins and ends—the alley.  But before entering , Isaac pauses to pull out a potato sack from behind the bush.  He smiles as he explains the importance of hiding your valuables.  “If this is stolen, I have  nothing to sleep in.”   I don’t think I would have considered a potato sack as anything valuable, and I definitely would not have entrusted a stranger with such precious information.

The boys take a right turn into an alley; the smell of burning trash and human feces engulf my nose before my eyes have a chance to survey their “home”.  Isaac takes me over to a corner of the alley where his friend, John, is sitting.  “Here is my friend, John.  He sleeps in the alley with us.”  John can barely lift his eyes to acknowledge me; he is too busy getting high on glue.  I wondered why Isaac was so quick to introduce me to his friend, John.  If I had a friend with an addiction or a socially unacceptable sin, I wouldn’t introduce him to a stranger.  Then again, I don’t think I am that good at befriending those with socially unacceptable behaviors…         It really does not surprise me that I have to come to Africa to be reminded of how to raise the standard of my living, but I am a little embarrassed that today’s lesson came from an 11-year–old-street boy who has never been to school.”

The weight of it has grown heavy on me. Day after day I walk through the streets and watch the street children beg and the mothers huddled under tarps to protect their babies from the sun or rain. Embarrassed, I often keep my eyes focused on the concrete below… not embarrassed for what I see in them, but embarrassed for what they see in me.

They see a wealthy Westerner who has never gone a day without the option of eating, been homeless, or even gone without a pair of shoes. They see a Westerner who has never experienced war, been left alone, or gone without medicine or education.

Destitution, whether I see it in the hollow eyes of an American shopping at the mall or in the tears of a hungry baby in Africa, pierces my heart. It causes me to reflect on the blessings I have: Friends, family, food, shelter, health, joy, and plenty of shoes.

After getting over my recurring feelings of guilt, I recognize that I am not called to be embarrassed of the blessings in my life, I am simply called to share them. I am called to share my friendship, my food, my shelter, a smile, and maybe even my shoes. I think I will leave some shoes behind in Africa, and when I return to the Sates and enter a mall I think I will share some smiles.

Four months pass, and Mary’s grows curious at the disappearance of Jackson. She saw his two brothers leave the slum, but never saw Jackson leave.  She slows down in front of his door and slowly removes the bucket from her head as she leans into the doorway.  There is Jackson, half naked and lying on the mud floor in a daze.  He had come down with tuberculosis and his brothers had abandoned him and left him to die alone. Forgetting her title as “Slut,” Mary runs and gathers the other women to help pick Jackson from the mud. The women use the money they had made from selling their beads to go and buy Jackson a bed. They lift him up onto the bed and spend the next four days tending to his medical needs.  When he is well enough to walk, they purchase him a bus ticket and send him to his home village to be cared for by his parents.

Today Mary and her friends continue to gather daily to make beaded necklaces and bracelets to finance the next need that may arise in the slum in Nairobi, Kenya.

We sometimes go through life using a word hundreds of times without ever considering its potential for impact. Our understanding of the word “forgive” is often limited to the context of our own experiences; therefore, we may understand its definition but have little appreciation for its transforming power.

Today, the country of Burundi is being rebuilt on the foundation of the people’s ability to forgive. Hutu and Tutsi tribes spent the past 30 years slaughtering each other’s women, children, and fathers in a divisive civil war, which included periods of genocide. Although the killing stopped in 2008, the memories of bloodshed are forever etched into the minds of the two tribes. So how do they move forward if they cannot forget the past?

It is only through the forgiveness of one another that Burundi has been able to look to a new future. And so today a new Burundi is beginning to emerge… A desire by many to unify the country, transformed by forgiveness…and filled with hope.

In developing countries beauty often appears without warning, without preparation, without an audience in mind, and without a camera to capture it. When a young woman gets up at sunrise to walk five miles to gather water for her family and pauses to smile and chat with friends at the water hole, her beauty appears. When a mother waits in line all day to have a doctor diagnose her sick child, her beauty appears. When a woman’s husband is slaughtered in a tribal war, and she walks for miles with her baby on her back to find refuge, her beauty appears. When she pauses to rest under the shade of a tree and turns to kiss her baby on the nose, her beauty appears. When a young girl tries on her bright yellow dress that she and her mom spent all day sewing, and her eyes glance at her father for approval, her beauty appears. When a woman labors all day in a field under the scorching African sun with her son on her back, her beauty appears.