With his Christian rock band, Jeremy Willet travels to Africa as an advocate for the hungry.
Written By Sherwood Kohn
Jeremy Willet has seen the horror of fatal famine. A dedicated aid worker in Africa, he cannot bring himself to take pictures of the people he helps because he does not want to deprive them of their dignity, and, one suspects, make permanent the sight of their starved bodies.
“Thirty thousand children under 5 have died within the past three months in East Africa,” he said. “It is one of the worst humanitarian tragedies in this century. “We feel a sense of urgency.”
At 26, the son of Glen Willet, pastor of Quest Community Church, Westminster, Jeremy has been witness to more calamity than most of us will see in a lifetime.
An earnest, slight, lightly bearded young singer in rumpled blue plaid shirt, blue jeans and scuffed tan slip-on shoes, Jeremy, with his brothers, Justin, 22 (on guitar), and Jordan, 20 (on bass guitar), has been touring with his Christian rock quartet, Willet for six years. A friend from South Dakota, Tyler Klusmann, works the drums. The music is standard, hard-pounding rock, but the lyrics are built around Christian themes, such as helping the poor and healing the broken.
The group plays 200 to 250 gigs a year as an advocate for the hungry, and works with “Hunger Strike,” which was founded as a youth division of the religious-based Food for the Hungry organization.
Willet’s wife, Kathleen, is a Hunger Strike field agent now working at disease prevention in Haiti. Jeremy met her in high school and married her in 2006, after which they both shipped out to do aid work. They see each other every other month.
Kathleen is a hands-on person. In the past, as a dedicated aid worker in Uganda, she has mourned with a family whose dead 3-year-old lay swaddled among them on the floor of a hut.
Willet is a graduate of Francis Scott Key High School with a Fine Arts degree in music from Carroll Community College. Like his father before him, he taught piano until he felt called to minister to the poor.
Willet travels abroad four times a year (he recently returned from Uganda and was on his way to Mozambique at this writing). But things are about to change. He and Kathleen are adopting an Ethiopian infant boy. Willet acknowledges that once he and his wife bring the child home next year, their travel schedule may be altered.
“We’ll handle it month by month,” he said. But the pull of the road and service to the poor is always there. And then there are the results of their work.
“It is so satisfying to see lives saved,” he said, “and to see American students challenged to reject commercialism – materialism; to see them change their lives and start thinking about other people. My life is based around service to the poor. I try to spend time with the poor and the homeless.”
On his trips abroad, Willet prefers to live with the locals, often sleeping on the floor in their huts. He is supported by concert ticket sales, sales of his recorded music and donations from local churches. Inspired by his father’s work, Willet intends eventually to become an ordained pastor.
“We advocate for the poor,” he said. “We got into the work because of our faith in the Biblical directive to take care of the poor. And we try to use music as a tool for interaction with local people and artists.”
But he does more than just interact. His group supports efforts to pack and send 100,000 meals from Westminster to Africa. The meals include rice, dried vegetables and vitamins for a family of four. It also sponsors children – about 3,000 in the past six years – and helps provide meals, education and clean water, as well as working to counteract such diseases as malaria, tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS.
“It only takes a few cents a day,” said Willet. “But we prefer the sustainable agricultural approach, rather than outright handouts.”
Willet’s rock concerts are often free, but the group asks for $25 donations from concertgoers, who receive a commemorative t-shirt, sticker and a souvenir photo book for their contributions.
“And by the way,” he said, “$25 provides 40 meals, all packed and shipped from Westminster and the surrounding area.”
