Several books, documentaries, and websites have just happened to pop up in my life over the past few months (this is never a coincidence, I believe.) All of these things had something in common: they are about HIV/AIDS, often focusing on the crisis in Africa, in particular (though AIDS continues to be a huge problem in many countries around the world, while the prognosis here in the United States is a lot better than it used to be.) I highly recommend watching the documentary Angels in the Dust, which takes place in South Africa. A wonderful woman named Marion Cloete lives and works there, providing a safe place to stay for children who are orphaned by AIDS, whose parents have rejected them because they have been sexually assaulted and they may be infected, or children who are sick and would not receive proper care if they stayed at home, due to the prevalence of folk medicine in certain areas. Marion holds therapy sessions with these children, works to educate the community about the spread of HIV (which happens almost all the time from either assault or infidelity), visits the sick and dying and offers to take them to the hospital to receive proper treatment...the woman is amazing. She's a firecracker. I have never met her, and I love her. Seriously, the documentary was very moving and inspiring, and at times quite sad. I was particularly moved by the story of one little girl in the film, who was probably about 8 or 9 years old. She lived on site at this orphanage, for lack of a better term, and spoke of a time when she was small (as if she wasn't small already!) She was raped by a man in her home, who then threatened to kill her if she told anyone. It is my understanding (from the film) that one piece of medicinal folklore in the area is that the men have been told that taking a girl's innocence will protect them against this virus. We know, of course, that this is garbage, and is in fact contributing to the spread of HIV. To make matters worse, this girl's mother said she would kill her if she kept talking about the assault, calling her a liar. Later, the girl tells Marion she is ready to be tested for HIV, which may have been spread to her from this assault a few years before. Because her mother was still living, legally they could not do the test without her permission- and the mother didn't even believe the girl had been attacked in the first place! It's heartbreaking enough to think of these children, sick or orphaned from this awful disease. It brings the sadness to a whole new level to think of how many of them have lived horror stories like this little girl's.
After watching the documentary, and reading these books, and stumbling upon these websites while researching other things, I felt a very strong compulsion to help, somehow. One of the most familiar ways I know how to make an impact on a situation so far away from me is through child sponsorship. I spent quite a bit of time online one evening browsing Compassion's site. You can actually limit your search to children that live in HIV/AIDS affected areas, so that's what I started looking for. Uganda was definitely the country that came up most often in my search. I have had an interest in Uganda for quite some time, for a variety of reasons (novels I read as a preteen and teenager, my knowledge of the wildlife there, the fact that it's just across the lake from Tanzania...), and decided to choose a girl living in that area, in the hopes that we could make an impact on her life in such a way that she might be able to stay safe, or get the help she needed if she was already affected by this disease in some way. I found a little girl, 10 years old, living in Uganda. Her picture was marked by three symbols: the symbol for HIV/AIDS prone areas, the symbol for living in an area with a high rate of child abuse and exploitation, and the symbol showing she had been waiting for a sponsor for a long time- well over 200 days, in fact. I went downstairs and told my husband about her, and asked if he thought I could go ahead and commit to be her sponsor. I felt that this was a cost we could probably afford, but I wanted to be sure. He recommended we wait a day while we thought it over. I prayed for that girl that night, but I also realized something: if we could afford the extra cost of another traditional sponsorship, we really should be putting that money toward expanding our family here, as opposed to our far-away family. That money should be used either to pay down debt, or to go directly in the special savings account set up so we can one day bring home a child like the one I was hoping to sponsor. The next morning I got up and got on the computer...and found that this precious girl had found a sponsor. I wasn't sad, I was thankful! Thankful that after all this time waiting and waiting, someone had finally claimed her, had finally committed to help this child rise up out of poverty through Compassion International. I felt good about my decision.
Fast forward a few weeks to my conversation with a Compassion representative on the day I received final details about my Tae leaving the program in Thailand. Normally, sponsors are only allowed to have three correspondence sponsor kids- a limit I reached a little over a year ago. However, earlier this year, maybe in February, Compassion posted the exciting news online that they had 500 children in need of correspondence sponsors, and just this once, we could break the Rule of Three. Of course I called right away and got on the waiting list, and that's when Jayid joined our family. When Tae left the program, that left us at the technical limit of three correspondence kids again. The wonderful people at Compassion told me that although I had three kids, since Jayid joined the group as a "bonus", I could get put on the waiting list for another correspondence sponsorship (as a low priority, of course.) I never would have considered giving any answer other than an enthusiastic "YES, PLEASE."
And that brings us to today. I normally write to my kids every week or so. Because of some things that have been going on recently, I haven't really felt like writing to them. Part of it has to do with the fact that I didn't feel I could write a positive, happy letter. Any letter I sent would surely be a downer ("Another pet died. Oh, and by the way, I might be having surgery.") So I finally logged in to my account this morning, and saw that, although Tae's name finally disappeared from my account a little over a week ago, we were now back up to four correspondence sponsor kids. The newest member of our far-away family is named Annet. She is a beautiful girl, ten years old, and she lives in Uganda. Just saying that makes me feel like crying happy tears. God listens to our prayers. He knows how badly I want to have a connection with at least one child in that country, since going over there myself is not an option right now. And what are the odds that my newest sponsor child would be a girl? Girls are requested more often than boys. Since I was a low-priority on the waiting list, I didn't choose a girl over a boy. I didn't have that option, even if I wanted it! And I certainly never would have guessed that she would be ten years old, the same age as the little girl I was hoping to sponsor more than a month ago. God is good, all the time.
There is a hint of a smile on that precious face!
Oh, she is just beautiful! What a sweetie!
ReplyDeleteI love seeing this time after time... God's hand is SO in these connections made through Compassion. It is amazing!!