“I met a woman named Leah in Tanzania. Leah is a kind and gentle woman who welcomed us into her fabric shop for a visit. Leah told us that she had been working in Mchangani for more than 12 years as a seamstress.”
Leah had lived in another village in the past, but her husband abandoned her for another woman when their daughter was young. Like many of the other women we met, Leah moved to Mchangani because she was trying to survive. It is a dark place in which to live, but the work here allows her to support her daughter. We asked if she was ever lonely or thought of marrying again, but she said the men on this island often have multiple families on other islands and also carry sexual diseases, so marriage would never be an option for her. She is a woman of faith and trusts that God has a plan for her life here. She told us that she desperately wants to help the young women on the island who are prostitutes because many of them are the same age as her daughter.
Often these young women cannot accept help because they are being controlled or because their hearts have just hardened and they have given up.
Leah’s daughter is now 15 and is attending boarding school, with plans to become a doctor someday. Leah beamed with pride when she told us that her daughter is consistently at the top of her class and simply won’t accept anything less! Leah is such a beautiful example of sacrificial motherhood and I am sure she is storing up many treasures in heaven.
– Amy & Michael Howe