Infinite Hope: August 2009

Monday, August 24, 2009

Succulents, Joy and Building!

You'll do best by filling your minds and meditating on things true, noble, reputable, authentic, compelling, gracious,
the best not the worst;
the beautiful not the ugly;
things to praise not things to curse.

Do that, and God, who makes everything work together,
will work you into his most excellent harmonies.
Philippians 4:8-9

It's springtime. Such a beautiful time of year, perhaps my favorite season, and it certainly is here in Tugela Ferry. We still have some cool, crisp nights, but during the day the sun is often out, the winter sun that you can still enjoy without getting scorched. We've been spending a good amount of time in our garden, shifting plants around and learning that it really is a near-desert, and the only things that survive the full sun are succulents and cacti.

Much like the climate, I feel like I am also just coming out of a winter season. A season of feeling a little like everything seems a little bit dried up, like the challenges of living and serving in South Africa, in the midst of the HIV/AIDS pandemic that has struck the Zulu people, like it's all just too much. I found myself being very negative, losing a sense of God's hope in the situation.

In the same way that the temperatures are starting to peak again while winter fades and summer nears, I feel like God has also been filling me again with joy and giving me encouragement.

In fact, things have been going very well for Eugene and I, and for Thembalethu.

We have a fence up on our land and I'll be going out again on Monday to support the work as we clear the land and start to build! From our board member, John Grant, and his connections, we have received a lot of donations for the building: fence, machinery to level/clear the site, blocks, bricks and discounted steel structure to build upon.

We brought the Department of Social Development social worker out on home visits to our HBC patients, as well as a food drop to an orphan-headed household. This should help move along our application to the Department to put in a soup kitchen for orphan and vulnerable children and our indigent HBC patients.

As we continue to share God's love and hope to a community suffering from the HIV/AIDS pandemic, the goals of our Thembalethu Care Centre are:

To increase our involvement in the community and in the lives of the sick, orphaned and vulnerable. We've been seeing people in their houses and working out of our bakkie (pick-up) for two years now, and having a centre will allow us to see people both where they live and at our centre.
To provide support to the community through HIV support groups for those infected and affected, support groups for gogos (grannies) looking after their grandchildren as well as groups to provide support and encouragement to orphaned youth and orphan-head-of-households.
To increase our support of orphaned and vulnerable children in the community through a soup kitchen that they can access before and after school, as well as help with homework and washing school uniforms.
To provide a meeting and training centre for our own and other training and support needs.

We're at the point at Thembalethu where we have our Non-Profit registration number and we can apply for outside funding. I've applied to the Department of Social Development and have a couple of other applications I'll be applying for in the next couple of weeks. Yet, we are trusting that God will continue to provide for us to assist in the community and we l have big funding needs to get our community centre up and running, to furnish and equip it so that it can provide support for the community. Please let me know if you'd like to give a financial gift to support our centre.

Prayer Requests:

Praise God that Xoli's death threat instigator was a stalker who, after suggesting a meeting with her husband, has stopped phoning. Please continue to pray for Xoli that she would recover fully from this traumatic month of calls as well as challenges in her own extended family with HIV illness and orphans.
Praise God for our board member John Grant (and his business partner Leon) who continue to provide invaluable assistance in getting ourselves a community centre built. Pray that God would continue to encourage, strengthen and bless them as the rainy season nears and their farm support business gets busier.
For God's continued provision of our work, that the needed resources would continue to be available to us as we build the centre and provide greater care for the community.
Encouragement for our Home-Based Care volunteers as there have been upstart groups of young HBC who are now receiving stipends while they do not. When we started, they were the only HBC in the area who were active, and after as many as 10 years supporting the sick and orphans as volunteers, and it is these new upstarts that have been able to grab up government stipends for their work.
For continued encouragement and support for my mom as she gets used to life without Bud. Also for my brother John's safety in Afghanistan.

May God fill you with His joy and peace,

Betsy

Join me in Praying for the Amangwe Community

Praise God for the land granted us and the new building that we’ve managed to put up!
Pray for an end to the stigma and denial surrounding HIV/AIDS in the Amangwe community – For courageous local people to come forward and openly talk about the huge devastation of AIDS in their community.
Pray for God’s provision and equipping of Thembalethu as we move forward in the work God has called us to do.
Pray for health, provision and hope for the many sick adults and orphaned children in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Pray for provision and wisdom as we move forward to establish Thembalethu Care Centre as a place of hope and love in the midst of Amangwe Tribal Area.
Pray for the HBC mommas that they would continue to be encouraged by God’s word and the fellowship of other believers to continue to deepen in their faith journeys.
Pray that God would build up strong, godly Christian leaders for the Amangwe community.

Jargon Buster

Adherence Training - The required three-module (three day) training given to HIV+ people who are on their way to accessing ART. The three modules cover topics including basic HIV, healthy living with HIV, and ARV adherence. The focus of the third module is to emphasize the need for the patient to takes his/her ARV medication according to the prescribed schedule.

AIDS - Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome; starts out as HIV, then becomes AIDS as the immune system damage becomes evident and opportunistic infections arise. document.

ARV(s) - Anti-retroviral(s) the multi-drug cocktail of treatment for AIDS that converts it from a terminal to chronic condition.

CD4 count- The measure of immune system strength through a blood test. If below 200, the patient can access ARVs immediately, if above 200, the patient must watch their health closely, and recheck their CD4 regularly.

Drug Resistance - Poor adherence to ART can lead to a public-health emergency where HIV virus mutates to develop a strain resistant to the positive effects of the treatment.

Gogo - [Zulu] grandmother

HBC - Home-Based Care, a grassroots network of (mostly) mommas who voluntarily look after the sick and orphaned in their community. With good training, they can be the eyes of the community to identify possible HIV/AIDS patients, motivate and assist them in receiving support and treatment. They also have the potential of remaining life-long treatment supporters of their patients on ARVs to ensure good adherence to the treatment.

HIV - Human Immuno-deficiency Virus, a virus that attacks the immune system of a person. It often lives in the body of an infected person for years before it shows any symptoms.

Opportunistic Infections - Infections that take advantage of the body's weak immune system. Some of the most common in South Africa are tuberculosis, meningitis, pneumonia, and oral thrush.

TB - Tuberculosis, is a disease most commonly infecting the lungs, and the number-one killer of HIV+ people. TB has been around for centuries and today infects one-third of the world’s population, killing almost two million people a year.