Lausanne World Pulse – LAUSANNE REPORTS – Mission through the Lens of AIDS

By Evvy Campbell

As an HIV-positive person, Christopher Yuan shared how his past addiction and drug trafficking led to a three-year federal prison term, during which he was informed by a prison nurse that he had contracted HIV. Alone in his prison cell, he noticed a reference to Jeremiah 29:11 scrawled on the metal bunk above him. At the time of his trial, Yuan began reading a Gideon Bible he had found in a garbage can. “At the most hopeless time in my life, God met me and told me he had plans for me, plans to give me a future and a hope. It was at that point that I submitted to him and relinquished control,” Yuan said. A documentary produced by CrossRoads and shot on location in South Africa, Russia, Jamaica and the United States relates the thought-provoking stories of Yuan and three other HIV-positive Christians who not only share a grave diagnosis but a sustaining hope in Christ.

Deborah Dortzbach and W. Meredith Long’s The AIDS Crisis: What We Can Do (InterVarsity, 2006) was also introduced at Urbana 06. Colleagues at World Relief with a combined forty years of engagement with the pandemic, Dortzbach and Long draw readers into responding to HIV/AIDS through vignettes of those whose lives have been changed by AIDS. Solid information interlaced with study questions and online resources enable readers to take the next step in both personally responding to AIDS and in stimulating their churches to do so. Long presented with Stella Kasirye, who has directed World Relief’s AIDS initiatives in Malawi, to speak on “Church Partnerships: Tackling AIDS Together.” In a “Sex, Sexuality, Gender and HIV/AIDS” seminar, Kasirye dealt with the issues of poverty that force women into sexual slavery. Paul Robinson, director of Wheaton College’s (Wheaton, Illinois, USA) HNGR (Human Needs Global Resources) internship program, addressed the social and economic inequities that propel the pandemic, while Serge Duss of World Vision outlined strategies for AIDS advocacy.

Experiencing AIDS
A “Broken Bread Meal for AIDS” gave Urbana 06 participants the opportunity to develop a physical awareness of hunger and its impact on a community. A simple meal of corn soy porridge, fortified with vitamins and minerals and easily digestible for those living with AIDS, was served to all conference participants. Such a meal is commonly provided by relief and development organizations to hungry communities. Participants were also given a card that contained ideas for discussion and prayer as well as the stories of people living with AIDS.

World Vision and the North American Millers’ Association partnered with Urbana in providing the recipe and the ingredients for the meal, which were sent to the convention chefs to test. Urbana director Jim Tebbe reported that the chefs rebelled, saying students would not eat the porridge, additional heavy duty trash bags would have to be ordered for the discarded food, the meal would go down in infamy and they did not want their names attached to it. But Urbana staff insisted and eight tons of gruel was prepared. In plenary sessions, delegates were informed of the purpose of the meal and responded to the challenge, eating virtually all the gruel. Money saved with this meal went toward the conference offering of $1,212,000USD. Robert Zachvitz, a World Vision senior policy advisor, urged students to host Broken Bread Meals on their campuses. Bible study guides together with packets of the corn-soy mixture are available through www.actingonaids.org.

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Dr. Evvy Hay Campbell is chair of intercultural studies at Wheaton College in Wheaton, Illinois, USA, and was facilitator of the 2004 Forum for World Evangelization Holistic Mission Issue Group. She is Lausanne senior associate for holistic mission.