Why Should We Care?

By Mark & Kathy Vaselkiv

This summer, our family traveled to Africa with three other Central families and one from Grace Fellowship. Our expedition was not a "mission trip" or a "safari," though we had opportunities to both minister and see magnificent African animals. We chose to call our excursion a "vision trip." Over the years, we had invested either time or treasure in several ministries working in Africa - Opportunity International, World Relief, and the International Bible Society. Although the mission of each organization is different, they have three things in common. First, their love for Christ is the foundation for their outreach; second, they have a significant presence in Africa; and third, each has been compelled to address the HIV/AIDS pandemic in the context of their work on the African continent. We wanted our children to see God working in another culture and context, especially one not bathed in the affluence and consumerism that surrounds them in Baltimore. In deciding to visit Malawi, Kenya and Rwanda, we could not ignore the impact of HIV/AIDS.

In Malawi, we experienced the impact of HIV/AIDS in the lives of women and children. Opportunity International provides very small loans to groups mostly comprised of women in villages surrounding Lilongwe. The illness and death rate from HIV/AIDS is so prevalent that built into every loan repayment rate is a fee for insurance to cover the cost of a funeral and lost labor when a family member dies of AIDS. We spent an afternoon in a dusty village with a single water spigot and no electricity. Four hundred children ranging in age from toddlers to teenagers gathered at a feeding program directed by local Christians and funded by donations from women in the United States. These children had been orphaned by HIV/AIDS or have parents who are too ill to care for them. The lunch of gloppy maize and dried fish is all the food they eat in a day and their education is limited to the afternoon instruction they receive from dedicated volunteers. They joyfully sing of God's love and recite the words of life they have memorized from the Bible. They have experienced living water in the midst of a land parched by death and decay.

While in Kenya, we met with teenagers who have been trained by World Relief to educate their peers about how to avoid being infected by HIV. We learned that since sex is rarely discussed in most African cultures, most young women lack knowledge or language to refuse advances from older men or to understand the consequences. In small groups in churches, schools and neighborhood clubs, students are learning how to avoid the infection that has destroyed the lives of many of the adults they know. The International Bible Society has been able to provide these small groups with copies of Reach4Life, a New Testament with accurate information about HIV/AIDS as well as a curriculum for learning together about God's love and design for their lives.

We then flew to Kigali, Rwanda to meet with our brothers and sisters working at World Relief and Opportunity. We thought that the major priority of both ministries would be tribal reconciliation from the genocide of 1994. Rwanda's HIV infection rate is lower than both Malawi and Kenya, but we soon learned the disease is wrecking havoc in Rwanda as well. Our visit to a World Relief ministry where everyone served carries the virus both broke our hearts and filled us with inspiration. The men and women at the center were singing and dancing when we arrived, and we heard testimonies about how AIDS drugs and local Christian leaders had given them new leases on life. In a sense, their death sentences had been revoked.

After two weeks of life changing experiences, we returned to a city where many neighborhoods carry HIV infection rates as high as parts of sub-Saharan Africa. But Baltimore is also a community where some of the most promising AIDS research is being conducted at our world class teaching hospitals. Great desperation and hope co-exist here in Maryland. For the next two weeks, our Missions Conference will demonstrate that hope can ultimately win out over the despair and suffering of broken bodies and hearts. The God we serve wants to eradicate AIDS and bring new life in Christ. He has given our world and the church the tools to battle the disease. Do we as a congregation share his heart and passion for healing the sick?