260,000 faces

It's a bit easier to read the statistics that say that Swaziland has the highest HIV/AIDS rate in the world (at 26%) than to think of the 260,000 beautiful Swazi faces that have been given this death sentence.  But today, I looked right into three of those faces and as I made eye contact, it brought reality closer to home.

• A woman in her 80's whose husband brought home AIDS from an affair before he died.  She now has more than 6 grandchildren that she cares for on her homestead, relying on the help of others when her garden isn't enough to feed their family.  She was going today to get her ARV's and also hoping to buy some multi-vitamins that help her feel better as she takes the ARV's.
  
• A woman in her 20's who has had HIV/AIDS for several years.  She has other health problems that complicate her condition (see more of her story here).  She lives on a homestead where her brother and his wife care for her, along with all of their children.  Today we were taking her to the clinic to get pain pills because she hasn't been able to sleep at night because she was in so much pain.  She can't walk so her brother picks her up & carries her over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes. 
  
• A teenage boy who has HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis.  He has been sick for weeks & is severely malnutritioned.  His mother was there as we brought him home from the hospital, lifting him from wheelchair to the car & watching him eat slowly...when a boy his age should be running around playing soccer after school.  While many people said the acceptable "he's going to be ok", I can't help but wonder in my mind if he is going to make it to 16.

Dudu...the first woman who I met who passed away
from AIDS.  Here she is celebrating her son's first
birthday days beforeshe passed away from
AIDS in 2009.  He is now 4 years old and in preschool.

As we walk through this suffering world, it's hard to understand how people could think there's no such thing as sin & the fall in this world.  Take 30 seconds in a suffering place & you have to admit that it was meant to be more than this & something has gone wrong.  God describes it like this in Romans 8 "For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now."

For those who know Christ, this suffering is only momentary in light of eternity... "So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison,as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal" (2 Corinthians 4:16-18).  

But today the weight feels heavy...there are 260,000 that God is calling us to love to death & another generation that is seeking change so that they don't become a statistics.