Although Changing Lives began in the spring of 2005, God had been challenging our attitude for some years before that. We had watched on our TV screens as refugees streamed out of various places in the world, but after a moment or two of sympathy, we had got on with own own lives. All that changed one Sunday morning in 1999 when Margaret sat in church next to an African lady who she had never met before. The lady had two children with her, and they seemed very withdrawn and frightened. At the end of the service the ladies introduced themselves. The African lady, Lydia, explained in broken English that she had just been reunited with her children after 7 years apart. She added that the children did not speak English.  A special friendship was born that Sunday morning.  Very slowly, the story began to emerge.

Lydia had been a midwife in the tiny African country of Burundi, a place devastated by so many years of tribal warfare.  She had been at work one morning when a man came to the hospital to warn her that her name was on the hit-list of the soldiers. It was the moment she had been dreading. People were often singled out for no other reason than that they were educated, and for that alone they were considered a threat which needed to be eliminated. Lydia knew enough to realise that she must escape immediately. She had fallen in love with a teacher at the local school, and she managed to get a call through to him. He came immediately, and after just a few precious moments together, she took her chance down at the docks where a ferry was about to leave on Lake Tanganyika.

What followed was days, weeks, months and then years of heartbreak. It was to be 7 years before she saw the children again. For many of those years she did not know if they were alive or dead. As for the man she loved, there was no news at all.

The full story can be read in Valley of the Shadow by Margaret Gee with Georges and Lydia. (http://www.valleyoftheshadow.co.uk)