After 10 days in Burundi, Charity Sandstrom has returned with a sense of hope and fresh resolve for her role as pastor of her congregation. Sandstrom, who went to Burundi as part of the Emporia’s First Friends Church, said the trip was full of valuable lessons in perspectives on people’s differences and similarities.
“It’s fun to learn that people are the same everywhere,” Sandstrom said, “that pastors are the same everywhere, that we all share the same burden for caring for people who are in our congregations and share the same frustrations.”
Sandstrom, who is in her third year as a pastor at the church, has many connections to the Friends Church in Burundi, which is no longer a mission but a fully self-governing church. Her grandparents were missionaries in Burundi from 1946 until 1984, and her mother, Ruth Kemper, was born and raised there before attending high school in the United States.
This was Sandstrom’s first trip to Burundi, which she took with her mother.
“It was good to be there with her and to meet people who had known my grandparents,” Sandstrom said. “It was good to meet people who remembered them and remembered them fondly.”
Among places she visited were churches her grandfather helped build and the house where her mother spent her childhood.
The trip was a part of the mission group Saltshaker, which travels to other countries to do missionary work. Saltshaker trips are open to church members from high school age to adults.
Because the church in Burundi is self-governed, Sandstrom said her group’s experience was different than that of those who go to countries where they’re still doing mission work.
“We went to go alongside or to encourage,” she said. “If you go into a mission field you’re more outreach-focused in your activities, whereas we went to kind of support the ministry that’s already in place.”
Among members in Sandstrom’s group were nurses who helped in the hospital delivery room and worked with children and youths who helped put on youth seminars.
“We just went and said, ‘Whatever you want us to do, we’ll do,’” she said. “We all operated in the areas where we have strengths.”
The goal of Saltshaker, Sandstrom said, is that, as Jesus said, we are the salt of the earth.
“And we want to get the salt out of the saltshaker, getting out of our comfort zone, getting to where we feel comfortable in going out to make an impact on the world.”
And they did get out of their comfort zones, learning to live without things most of us take for granted, like running water.
“I learned that things you’d think would be a hindrance or a barrier, you find you can live without a toilet seat or a flushing toilet. We had a shower and a sink and a toilet in our bathroom, but we only had running water two of the days we were there.”
Sandstrom also ventured from her comfort zone when she was asked to help teach a seminar for other pastors, some of whom had to communicate through translators.
“There’s a whole lot more that we can do than what we think we can,” Sandstrom said, explaining that, for her lack of experience and wisdom as a young pastor, the experience was helpful to her.
“Coming from a scriptural basis, it’s not about me or what I know or what I think or what I understand, it’s about what scripture says, which is ‘Shepherd the sheep under your care,” she said. The other pastors know that figuratively and literally, as many of them have family members who tend sheep.
Burundi is a poor country, Sandstrom explained, one where 90 percent of the population lives in poverty and where most cook their food over open wood fires.
“They are poor people, but they are very rich in their love for one another and in their hospitality towards visitors,” she said.
“What a blessing that is and what a responsibility that is to reciprocate.”
Despite the surrounding poverty, Sandstrom and the others were well-taken care of by their hosts, being fed and even being offered buckets of hot water so they could have bucket showers.
“How do you respond to that sacrificial hospitality?” Sandstrom asked.
Sandstrom came home with a clear message — that when people are willing, there’s a lot more they can do than they think.
“They may speak differently, they may look differently and they may dress differently or they may not share the same customs, but where it counts, people are pretty much the same.”