Gloriose

Today I'd like to introduce you to Gloriose - I've been in email contact with Gloriose in order to find out more about her and get her story straight. And to wish her happy birthday - she turned 50 on November 21st! I now feel ready to tell you about her and am trusting that I can do her justice. We met Gloriose in Burundi and had no idea how her story would touch our hearts.

I wish you all could meet Gloriose, see her beautiful face and hear her sweet, gentle voice tell you of her passion for women. And she is passionate about women! She has an incredible heart that, first of all, loves God and secondly, breaks for the women of Burundi. She believes that God is calling her to minister to these desperately downtrodden but beloved women - I believe she is too!

Gloriose began a radio career 24 years ago and as her voice has gone out over the airways, so has her love and compassion. As Gloriose tells it, "I saw around me the life that other women led like my mother and I didn’t stop thinking that my Burundian society lived essentially off the efforts of women:
It is the woman who goes to the field to cultivate while the men go around pretending to work.
It is the women who look for food and who suffer when the children are ill.
Today it is the women who learn a small business to insure the family’s survival when the husband leaves home."

So she set out to do what she could to help. Having only become a Christian in 1991, by 1995 she began a ministry (with women from her church) to help the sick. These women share from their own meager salaries in order to bring food to the hospital and then to pray with the ill. (When you think hospital, don't think of our standard but rather ones where human rights are regularly abused. A Human Rights Watch news release quotes the following: "I had to come to hospital because I needed a caesarean delivery. When I got the bill, the doctor said to me, 'Since you have not paid, we will keep you here.' Life here is difficult. I don’t have permission to leave with my baby. We are often hungry here. I cannot stand this situation any longer.– Christine K., an 18-year-old woman detained with her baby at Louis Rwagasore Clinic, Bujumbura. )

As the years have gone by, Gloriose continued to reach out to and care for women. In her own words: "I think a lot about women. I pray for women. I encourage women a lot. Those who have heard me for a long time can testify that in my radio programs my interest is in women. I am convinced that God wants to transform our Burundian society, which suffers from so much evil during more than twelve years of war, using transformed women.

I suffer with the woman who lost her husband during the war and who does not know what to do with his orphans. I would like to do something for her.

I suffer when I see many girls and women give themselves to prostitution because of heartless men who, instead of helping them honestly, prefer to buy and abuse their bodies.

I suffer when I see women contaminated by HIV/AIDS because they were raped.

I suffer when I see the poor woman always tired for the survival of her children." As she learned more and grew in her relationship to Christ, she was led to a ministry of listening. With training, she has learned how to really listen and get to the core of a woman's needs.

So what is Gloriose's plan to help the women? She has developed a plan that is quite extensive in scope but also very practical. She has set up an association that will offer training and micro-finance to the women. Global Support has set up a fund to help get resources to Gloriose and I encourage you to pray about being a part of this support. If you are interested, please comment on this blog and I'll get you information on how to do so. I believe that Gloriose, with a little support from a lot of us, could transform the lives of thousands of Burundian women. I believe God has called her to do so and I'm obeying a calling to tell others about it. Please pray, please tell others about Gloriose and please consider giving of yourself to the women of Burundi.