KwaMhlanga

One of our trips has been to see an AIDS orphanage ministry in a town called KwaMhlanga (pronounced kwam-shlanga). In the picture you see a home where people in this area live. It is extremely sad to see and your heart goes out to these families. In many ways it reminded me of places that we saw in Fiji; the only difference was that everything was green. Anyway AIDS is rampant and funerals are commonplace. The ministry in this area is training men and planting churches to reach these families with the Gospel. I believe that they have something like 40 churches in this immense area. They also are providing homes for orphans who have lost parents to the epidemic, as well as providing schooling. Here is a picture of one of their graduates, Abraham, who wants to go to medical school to train to become a doctor and come back and help the ministry through the medical field.



Pray for Abraham as he seeks God's direction and pray that God would open the doors needed to provide the medical education he desires. Abraham was so grateful to God for his time at the school. Let me give you an idea of how needed doctors are to educate the people. When you enter this area you don't talk about AIDS because they believe that if you name it in the presence of someone, you curse them to get AIDS. They believe that if you are HIV+ and you have intercourse with a virgin, you lose your HIV+ status. Some even believe that it is a white man's ploy to rid the land of the blacks. There are millions of orphans in South Africa due to the AIDS epidemic and this is just one of the ministries who is reaching out with the Good News as well as tangible actions of love. I will share about some of the others as we get the opportunity to visit them. But as you can tell by the picture with Kyle and Skyler, they are adorable and love to have fun, just like all kids do.



As you think of Africa, pray for wisdom for us as we explore about how best to help with AIDS epidemic and many, many orphans. We cannot ignore what James 1:27 says, "Pure and undefiled religion before God and the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their trouble, and to keep oneself unspotted from the world." Regrettable we focus on the latter half of the verse and ignore the first.