What do you do?

What do you do when you find out that one of your friends has AIDS?

Yes AIDS- the disease that kills millions of sub-Saharan Africans annually.

http://www.thisissierraleone.com/2012-world-hiv-report-sub-saharan-africa-hardest-hit-by-hiv-with-23-5-million-hiv-positive-people-in-2011-about-69-percent-of-the-global-total/

The link above has quick stats about AIDS around the world.  1.4 million or 11.5% of Mozambicans have AIDS.  If this is accurate, I know several people with AIDS (1/10 people I meet)- I just don't know that they have it.

So what do you do when AIDS is no longer that terrible disease that happens to "others", but someone you know and love has it?

Pray? Cry? 

Do what you can to connect them to a program distributing food and medication but still feel hopeless as you leave.

Trust God and walk away? 

Question God and walk away?

Curse God and walk away?

 (You must walk away at some point- you can’t stay forever)

Do I fully believe the words I utter, that God loves you?   

 Yes I do- but there’s so much I don’t understand.  God, don’t you see how much it hurts?

 But now I see why you, who has been sick on and off since I returned in July, have a hard time believing and accepting God’s love.

In this I’ve seen sacrificial love. Self-less love.  They’re “married”.  By that I mean they live together and called themselves married, without a formal or legal covenant (which by the way, is how most marriages are defined here (in Vilanculos), except there’s usually children too).  She has AIDS.  Apparently she had it before they “got married” and she told him.  So they’ve never actually been intimate…which explains why he is healthy and she is weak.  He hasn’t been working the last few weeks. He’s stayed home to take care of her.   It’s obvious that he loves her….his actions demonstrate affection in a way words cannot.  Few Mozambican men would do this.  Few men from any culture would do this.  He aches and weeps for her.

Will God heal?