As I sit here thinking about the story that I am about to write; I can’t help but pray for of all the people whom I know who have been touched by this disease we call AIDS;  families rocked by this killer.    They call the HIV-AIDS virus a pandemic, "pan, all + demos, the people", Webster's New World Dictionary.

Yes, I have seen the statistics.  Most of those, as horrendous as they appear, are lower than reality.   There is no systematic or mandatory AIDS testing.  Sure if you want an AIDS test you can go and get one.  But who is going to go voluntarily to see if they have a death sentence written upon them.  The attitude of most people is, “if I don’t know, then I won’t get sick”, or  “if I ignore it, perhaps it will go away”. But it won’t go away.  

There is so much written about finding a cure, a vaccine, something.  There is so much talk about funding for AIDS education, condom distribution, why we even have an AIDS awareness week.  We are trying to find a band-aid big enough to put on a wound that is breaking wider and wider apart.  We will not find one.  The answer is not testing, it is not funding, and it certainly isn’t condom distribution!  The answer is holy living.  The answer is Jesus Christ. 

In much of the world, AIDS is a disease that hits an isolated portion of the population.  If you fit in the category then you are at risk.  If you are a drug user, if you are in the sex industry, if you are a homosexual then you are in the high-risk category.  But in Africa you can be risk if you are married, or plan on being married, because AIDS in Africa isn’t a disease that hits certain pockets of the population.  It is a disease that hits adults, youth - people in the prime of life.  AND, the repercussions reverberate in families, touching the lives of the elderly and children. 

Funerals are seen every day in every town, trading center and village.   In the city of Harare, Zimbabwe, traffic lights are being stolen from off of street corners to be cut up and molded into handles for coffins, metal vases used to hold flowers to mark the graves are also being stolen for the same reason.   In other places, people are being buried in blankets because there are too many deaths; the demand is too great for the coffin makers. 

One reason why the AIDS virus is hitting Southern Africa so hard is the cultural practices that go on here.  A man who has more than one wife is not unusual in many African cultures.   I know a woman, we will call her Mrs. Chikone (fictitious name). She is the first wife of a man who now has three wives.  The last wife he married just last year.  This last wife was married to his brother who had recently died – of what one might ask?  Well, let’s see, he was in his late 40’s, he had been sick for several months, and at the end of his life he was a shrunken skeleton of the man he once was.  Don’t you know, very few people here die of AIDS.  They die of tuberculosis, or pneumonia, or malaria.  So now Mr. Chikone has a new wife.  He married her so he would not lose his brother’s children.  By this culture’s standards, a noble gesture.  But the reality is that if he had not already brought the AIDS virus into his immediate family, he definitely has now.  This isn’t always the black and white issue that it is in other parts of the world.  Praise God, Mrs. Chikone, (the first one) is a believer in Jesus Christ.  She knows she is at risk, but she also knows she has a Savior.  

One program currently reaching young people in Zimbabwe is called, True Love Waits.  Its purpose is to target unmarried young  people and present the gospel message.  Not only the gospel, but, to give them an opportunity to make a commitment to God, themselves, and their future mate to be sexually pure before marriage.  Africa is inundated with videos, television shows, and music that give the world’s idea of love (sex).  We are trying to combat that with God’s idea of love: faithfulness, purity, and holiness.