This piece originally appeared in The Global Voice Newsletter, April 2005.

Celesta, Heather and I have been meeting twice a week for the last couple of months to prepare for our seminars in Africa this upcoming summer on nutrition, primary health care, HIV/AIDS, female genital mutilation, pregnancy and child care. It has been a continually humbling process. It seems each time we come together to share our compiled research a feeling of helplessness sets in and if we're to do anything that would make a difference we realize that God Himself must intervene.

When you read the statistics mentioned in this newsletter the numbers are so overwhelming that it makes it easy to treat these people as just numbers. But when you've gone and seen their faces and held their calloused hardworking hands. When you've prayed for their ill bodies and been embraced by their tearful welcome, you would know that behind every number is a face, a face just like yours and mine. Let's no longer keep ourselves from feeling for them for if we, the body of Christ, do not suffer with the poor and underprivileged then who ever will? Here we are Lord, send us...three young women ready to give it all so that your African daughters will know You in their bodies and in their hearts.

In the summer of 2000, I was given a most humbling opportunity to travel to Kenya, East Africa for the second time and facilitate health seminars for impoverished, rural Kenyan women. I remember feeling completely helpless as I stood in front of almost a hundred Kenyan women who ranged from ages 17 to 70. Suddenly my handy red medical notebook full of notes and information I had been preparing for months prior to the trip meant nothing and I realized how desperate I was for God's help.

There I stood a 5 foot 4 white girl, just out of my teens; never been pregnant, never finished nursing school, never experienced life the way they had and I was going to inform them about their bodies and their health. Taking a few deep breaths before starting to talk, I was suddenly ripped out of my own selfish world of feeling helpless and afraid and I heard the Lord whisper to my heart, "Just open your eyes" and so I did.

I saw these women, each one as an individual, every one of them as a child of God, made in His image, placed on this side of the earth by His plan; and He loved each of them so much - and I saw them the way He did. Each of them became immediately dear to me as if they were my own mother, my sister, my cousin, my closest friends; they were family. I thought to myself if my own mother was in need of information and teaching that could very well save her life, or keep her from unnecessary pain and suffering, I would do anything, pay anything and go any where to get her the help she needed. Jesus' piercing words, "Love your neighbor as yourself" rang in my head and soaking in the moment I remembered why the Lord had me there - to give myself and to suffer with. (The definition of the word compassion is "to suffer with.")

After what was just 3 hours of teaching the simplest of things, such as informing women that wiping from front to back after using the restroom prevents urinary tract infections, these women were literally rejoicing at all they had learned. At first, they reacted shy and quiet, unsure of how to respond to my expressive openness to speak on such intimate issues, but as they started getting answers realizing their questions and lives were important and actually mattered to us, their straight faces turned to smiles and their smiles to out-loud laughter! By the end, we were like family loving on each other with grateful hearts.

These women had great need. Some of their families were suffering from an illness they believed to be Malaria and were treating their symptoms by not eating or drinking for days. Eventually their family members died, from what was only diarrhea. Dying, ceasing to live - because of dehydration, caused by diarrhea. Dying - because they just didn't know!

This might seem unreal or maybe even foolish to some and perhaps even reading about suffering doesn't affect them that much, perhaps because it is not them. Well for me, it is me, my family, my mother, my brother, my sister and I am responsible. NO ONE should ever have to die from diarrhea and I write these words with tears of intense love. Why are we so quick to find our life, when there are people losing theirs for unnecessary reasons because they are simply uninformed? There's no excuse.

Why do we keep ourselves "safe" thinking it's God-given "wisdom", when just one trip to inform people who don't know could save lives, give hope, and give Jesus! It is not their fault.

While we sing, "God Bless America" remembering our freedom, our family in Africa cries out to the same God as they bury their newborn baby who never had a chance to live because it died from a complication at birth related to the mother's genitals being mutilated and it was unable to have a proper birth. Are we free? If you've said yes, then let's do something with that freedom that helps someone other than ourselves. If you say no, then I would have to agree with you.

I know that so many of you who read this newsletter share this burden with us. Thank you for your help. This article is written from my heart and it sometimes feels as if I've seen too much.

No, I know I have seen too much and because of this privilege to have been sent by you all and to have seen what I've seen, I will live compelled and driven by what I've seen. I will fight my flesh every day living in this comfortable nation try not to forget our family around the world who is suffering unjustly, and I don't want to just "not forget" them, but I want to live to give myself for them; to be a voice for them!

Please, we beg of you, as God has allowed us a way to go and be sent to offer help this summer, love your neighbor, give of yourself in any way you can. I refuse to be silent and I refuse to be afraid to ask you for help. We need money and we need a lot of it because there is a lot of need. We need resources. We need you!! Would you be willing to go too so you can see too much and be the next person writing a letter on behalf of so many without a voice? If not, then would you help us in going? I promise we won't spend your money in dishonest ways. We won't spend one dime on ourselves because trust me, we know we have enough. We have enough, but they don't. They are OUR responsibility. We will always see it this way, so please pray to God and cry out to your Abba Father, just as they do in their desperation. Ask Him how you can help, what can you give? He just might speak to your heart the same words He did mine that day in front of the Kenyan women, "Just open your eyes".

James 1:27 Religion that is pure and undefiled before God and the Father is this: to visit and care for orphans and widows in their affliction...

Please help us to visit and care for these wonderful people of God...