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Why care about HIV/AIDS?
Why should we care about HIV/AIDS? Why not focus on cancer, tuberculosis, diabetes, or heart disease? For a very simple reason: HIV carries a stigma that other diseases don’t carry.
No one ever gets banished from her village because she’s infected with tuberculosis. No one loses his job simply because of malaria. Husbands don’t beat or divorce their wives for developing the flu, diabetes, or cancer. No relatives refuse to care for children whose parents were killed in an accident. But all of those things and more happen on a daily basis where HIV/AIDS is involved.
Not only does HIV carry stigma and shame, but it is preventable. We can’t prevent many other diseases that plague mankind, but we know how abstinence, monogamy, and condoms can go a long way toward stopping HIV in its tracks.
Because of the fact that HIV is preventable, I can hear you saying, “It’s their own fault then; their own risky behavior led to them being infected. I’m not sure why you’re asking me to care about someone else’s stupid choices.”
I know how you feel because that’s how I felt at one point. The fact is, though, that millions of women receive the disease from unfaithful husbands, millions of babies are born to HIV positive mothers, and millions become HIV positive through tainted blood supplies. Learn more >>
Kay Warren, executive director, Saddleback Church's HIV/AIDS Initiative
SADDLEBACK STORIES
 AIDS walk provides witness for Christ
More than 100 volunteers from Saddleback Church's HIV/AIDS Initiative participated in an AIDS walk at Angel Stadium in Anaheim, Calif., May 12. "Ordinary believers walking alongside those who are HIV positive is the goal of our ministry," said Elizabeth Styffe, director, Saddleback Church's HIV/AIDS Initiative. "Do you want to make a difference in someone’s life? Show up. Being with and alongside people is what we’re all about." Opportunities to serve >>
 Saddleback students working to stop AIDS
Saddleback Church calls its student HIV/AIDS ministry 8K, representing the 8,000 people who die from AIDS-related causes every day. The students meet monthly for training and learning about HIV/AIDS and how they can respond to it, and they’re starting to engage their schools. Read more >> | E-mail Cheri Healy for more information >>
 Pastor Rick, other leaders point to church as answer to orphan crisis
During the Evangelical Orphan Care and Adoption Summit, Pastor Rick joined other Christian leaders looking to the Church as the body large enough to help the world’s 143 million orphans. Pastor Rick tied the orphan crisis to the world’s most urgent problems – spiritual emptiness, egocentric leadership, poverty, pandemic diseases, and illiteracy. “The only thing big enough in the world to solve these problems is the massive distribution network called the Church,” he said. Read more >>
 AIDS ministry part of larger missions focus for Warren
A small tent church where 50 adults cared for 25 AIDS orphans in South Africa helped spark his wakeup call to the HIV/AIDS crisis, Pastor Rick says in the spring edition of Missions Leader, published by Woman’s Missionary Union.
“The realization that that tiny church was doing more to help the hurting than my mega-church punctured my heart,” Pastor Rick told Missions Leader, recounting his visit to the African country several years ago.
“That night I sat under the African sky and thought, ‘How did I miss the AIDS crisis?’ Then I asked God: ‘What else have I been missing? What are the problems so big that no one else has been able to solve them?’” Read interview >>
 Kay Warren challenges young adults at Urbana 06
The first time she met a homeless woman dying of AIDS, Kay Warren realized that nothing in her Christianity had prepared her to face that situation. Now she’s convinced that in times like that, she can make the invisible God visible to suffering people. At Urbana 06, Warren told 22,000 young adults that, by caring for people with HIV, they can demonstrate that God cares as well. View Kay's message >> |
Pastor Rick shares strategies to S.T.O.P. AIDS at Urbana 06 >>
 Saddleback student creates AIDS awareness video
Matt Champagne, a 15-year-old student at Capo Valley Christian High School, created "8,000 a day/every day," an AIDS awareness video shown during all high school services to commemorate World AIDS Day.
“15 million children have lost one or both parents to AIDS. That’s around the same number of high school students in the whole United States,” Matt shares through his video as he challenges high school students to be leaders in the fight against the disease.
Watch video >>
ASK A QUESTION with Elizabeth Styffe, R.N., M.N.
 Q: By ministering to those with HIV, am I putting myself at risk?
A: HIV can spread only when the blood or body fluid of an infected person enters the bloodstream of another person through a cut, scrape, puncture, or mucous membrane. HIV is NOT spread through holding hands, hugging, light kissing, or other casual contact. Touching and reaching out to a person who is HIV+ is one of the most important and meaningful things a person can do. You are currently ministering to people with HIV/AIDS and don’t even know it. People in our church are HIV+. Continue to open your arms. Your only risk is that you would miss what the love of Christ compels us to do.
Elizabeth Styffe, R.N., M.N., is the director of Saddleback Church's HIV/AIDS Initiative.
Have a question about Saddleback's HIV/AIDS Initiative? Ask Elizabeth >> |