Meeting AIDS

We're encouraging everyone to pick up a prayer calendar in the atrium, as well as a string bracelet to help remind you to pray daily during these six weeks.

Today's prayer request on the calendar is "Pray for the end of AIDS in Africa and around the world." Since I am a stranger to AIDS, I've been reading some books on the topic, the latest entitled An African Awakening written by Valerie Bell. Valerie is incredibly gifted with words and has written several books. She's wife to the executive vice president of the Willow Creek Association, and I'll share her story of the first time she "met AIDS" on a trip to Kenya.


That morning, with Christo's teaching emboldening us, we leave the classroom and enter the field. Faith, a little girl of about four, is our introduction to AIDS. They've dressed her for our visit in her best- a pink crinoline party dress. I'd guess it was vintage missionary barrel, circa 1950's. Really, I could have worn that dress as a child. She is stoic, as if the spark of life has been sucked from her small body. Her eyes are dulled by fever. Her too-thin arms and legs dangle limply from her body. Clearly, she is failing.


Fiona, a World Vision staffer, fills in this little girl's story. Faith's mother and father both died of AIDS-related complications, leaving four young children, including Faith, who was infected with HIV. Ashina, Faith's married older sister, herself a mother of four, took in her four orphaned siblings. Ashina's husband was wealthy by Maasai standards; he owned a herd of more than two hundred cattle, plus many sheep adn goats. But he felt strongly stigmatized by Faith's HIV presence in their home. Soon he forced his wife to choose between him- with the security and support he provided-and her orphaned brothers and sisters. Ashina chose her siblings. Consequences quickly followed: Ashina's husband abandoned them, taking all their cows, a Maasai's primary source of income and food. Putting his family behind him, he moved to another village and started a new family. Ashina receives no help from him, and without a source of income, she struggles to provide for her family of eight children.

Holding Faith in her arms, Fiona finishes this family's dire story with Faith's medical prognosis- this four year old weighs only 16 pound. Unfortunately, Faith is three pounds too underweight to be considered a candidate for antiretroviral treatments. She is too weak, too little. With our without drugs, she is dying. The precious treatments must be given to better candidates. As I scan the circle of adult faces in that dank and dark place, the emotion we share is the same unspoken frustration. All the king's horses and all the king's men- all our combined church and personal resources- will not save this child. We are three pounds too late.

If I say that to a person we ache to comfort this child, it is an enormous understatement. She is handed to me first and comes without protest, as if all fight is gone. Every maternal cell in me wants to comfort, pray, and sing into that darkness "Jesus loves you, this I know." I try to make my moments with her count. Massaging her hot little head and molding her weak body to my own, I rock and bend toward her ear, whispering words I know she can't understand but that hopefully contain something of the comfort of a mother. Faith neither protests nor responds.

Later that night, writing in my journal, I find the words that had escaped me earlier that day. Oh resigned little girl. I hate this disease and how it's reduced you. And that dress. We used to call that a "twirling" dress. I wish I'd seen you in it, dancing and laughing with dizziness. Crinoline dresses were meant for partying, not for dying- just as four year old girls were meant to scatter the magic of their laughter and joy into the world, not to break hearts with their suffering. It's so twisted.
Your mother...I can't stop thinking of your mother. Did you ever know her? When she looked at you did you see pride and joy in her eyes or overhear her say to your father, "We make such beautiful little girls?" But how would you know these things? You never really had a chance to be a daughter, or just to be four. I am so overwhelmingly sorry. What kind of a world is it that can be three pounds too late and never know it? There should never be a "three pounds too late."

Reading the stories of AIDS breathes life into the statistics for me. Each person with a name, a face, a family. Each person made in the image of God and made as it says in Psalm 8 "just lower than the heavenly beings and crowned with glory and honor." Reading the stories of AIDS also breaks my heart and brings me to my knees. You might consider offering your own thoughts and prayers on this blog as we become more aware of the AIDS pandemic over the next weeks.

What are the challenges?

At Orchard Hill Church, over the next six weeks, we're inviting people into the following challenges:

Prayer:

- to pick up a prayer calendar at the information counter and to commit to praying for those who are under-resourced in the Cedar Valley and throughout the world. There are prayer bracelets available that will also serve as reminder for you to be in prayer for God's compassion and justice to manifest through His people.

-Join together to pray on Wednesday evenings from 6:30-7:30 p.m. in rm. 141 at OHC.

Identifying with the poor:

During the week of October 12-19, we ask you to consider how you and your family might choose to remember and identify with those in need.

- Eat only rice and beans the entire week or part of this week.

- Refrain from any discretionary spending this week (restaurants, malls, etc.)

-You might consider fasting from all food for a given time this week.

There will be an offering box at the information counter Oct. 19 if you wish to give the money you saved this week. The money will go to mission efforts in Haiti and Mozambique.

Child Sponsorship:

- If you already sponsor a child somewhere in the world, we ask that you bring your child's photo to the information counter on Oct. 5, 12, or 19. We will make a copy of the photo and place your sponsored child's photo on the wall.

- Consider sponsoring a child from Haiti or Mozambique. You may sign up to sponsor a child on Oct. 5,12, or 19, at a counter in the main lobby.

-Write and send a letter to your sponsored child. Remember your sponsored child in prayer.

World Vision Experience: AIDS

On November 6-11, The World Vision AIDS village will be set up in the community center of Orchard Hill Church in order to help grow our hearts for the millions of people impacted by HIV/AIDS.

- There are many opportunities to volunteer to be a part of this experience. Learn more and sign up to volunteer at www.worldvisionexperience.org or contact Brian Carr at ICWR@cfu.net.

The village will need set-up volunteers on Nov. 6, hospitality/operating volunteers Nov. 7-10, and tear down volunteers on Nov. 11. In all, about 350 volunteers are needed!

- You may make a reservation to experience the AIDS Village at www.worldvisionexperience.org. Click on "reserve a ticket" and locate Orchard Hill Church on the page. Plan on 30 minutes to walk through, not recommended for children under 12.

We hope that you and your family will participate in these challenges which we pray will turn all of our hearts toward God and toward our neighbor in need.

Why challenges for the heart?

I recently did a search on the word "heart" in the NIV Bible and found it 743 times in Scripture. The verses very clearly reminded me that my heart is "deceitful above all things.." (Jeremiah 17:9) and that it is God who "gives me a new heart." (Ezekiel 36:26). Left to myself, my heart is very quickly found to be selfish, greedy, and proud. In order to allow God to step in and grow my heart, I often have to do something that gives Him access to my heart. That is the purpose of these challenges for the heart over the next six weeks. To do some things that might give God access to our hearts so that He might grow our hearts in love for Him and for His people who are under-resourced in the world.

We invite you over the next six weeks to step into some of these challenges and then to share on this blog how God moves in your heart through them. We pray that this blog will be a place where God can help us all to learn more about His heart and to learn from each other about how God moves in our hearts and through our lives.

I'm looking forward to this journey with you-

Laura Hoy