Madeleine Mukantagara arrives at the bedside of Athanasie Nyirangirababyeyi. She lives on a mattress in her son’s home. She sleeps under a poster of the words of Psalm 23: “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.” She has been sick for five years and has taken liquid morphine for three.

“With pain relief I can eat. I can go outside,” Ms. Nyirangirababyeyi says. “I can greet my neighbors. I can walk slowly . . . and go to church.”

Rwanda isn’t the only country in Africa making its own morphine. Rwandans got the idea from people in Uganda. There, people were making liquid morphine from powder. For nearly two decades, Ugandans mixed the medicine in a kitchen sink! Now people in African countries Kenya and Malawi make morphine too.

On a map, you’ll find Rwanda near the middle of Africa. It is one of the smallest countries on the continent. Rwanda has a past full of trouble. In 1994, people from to the Hutu people group there killed people from the Tutsi people group. Around 800,000 people died. That’s a lot of pain for any country—much less a tiny one. Many Rwandans who survived that time were left with terrible injuries. But many doctors in Rwanda didn’t know enough about morphine back then. Some were scared to use it.

Now the bottles of liquid morphine are given to hospitals and pharmacies. They are kept under lock and key. Then community workers like Ms. Mukantagara pick them up. They are carried to the homes of the suffering.

Some survivors of the tragedy in Rwanda believed people should suffer quietly. They thought telling someone you were in pain was showing weakness. The Bible says God comforts His people when they suffer. He does this so they can comfort each other. (2 Corinthians 1:3-4) We don’t have to hide suffering. We share it with others so we can get help.

Surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows. — Isaiah 53:4