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I will never forget my 2002 encounter with Sheba in Kabul, Afghanistan. I went there to do video documentaries on the plight of widows and children. Although I had traveled all over the world, I had never seen anything like Afghanistan. The country had been at war for over 20 years, from the Soviet invasion in 1979, through the Afghan Civil War and the Taliban takeover in the nineties. When I arrived it had been less than a year since the ouster of the Taliban. The country was also suffering from seven years of drought, and everything was covered with dust. The river in downtown Kabul had become a small stream, filled with women doing their laundry.
We visited Sheba in a three-story school building abandoned because of bomb damage. The school housed families who had nowhere else to live. Two-year olds were crawling around in a building with 30 feet deep craters. We did the interview through a translator, with Sheba surrounded by her nine children - the Taliban had killed her husband. Under Taliban rule, she couldn't appear in the streets without a male escort, so she was surviving by having her sons sell water in plastic bags. 
Sheba was part of a widow-quilting project. A Christian Non-Governmental Organization provided the materials to make the quilts, and paid the widows a dollar for each one completed. She tried to make one quilt a day, even though the cotton was so stiff that it caused her hands to bleed as she forced the needle through it. Sheba, however, was quite determined and a very tough lady.
After the interview, I began to weep. I was completely overwhelmed with all that this woman and her family had suffered. Sheba saw my tears and asked the translator why I was crying. When my tears were explained to her, her tears also began to flow. In that moment, she knew that a western Christian woman cared for her, and that the United States of America also cared for her.
I conducted many other interviews with Afghan girls returning to school after 7 years and people rebuilding homes rafter years of war. The recurring theme of their comments was "Please do not abandon us again as you did when the Soviets left in 1989." I pray we won't abandon them.
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