HIV 2

Our last visit was to a woman Zack calls Grandma Ann.  Grandma Ann has a very different experience with HIV.  She is very old - I'm not sure how old - and is taking care of her five grandchildren.  In Kenyan culture, kids provide for their parents financially after they've grown old.  There is nothing like saving for retirement.  Grandma Ann's son and wife died of AIDS leaving behind 5 orphan children.  Now Grandma Ann is trying to provide for them.  

As we ride down dusty trails we finally reach Grandma Ann's house.  I'm shocked - even by Kenyan standards, this place is run-down.  Zack tells me, "When I first met her, I was scared - 5 kids and a woman in that house!"  The pit toilet has sheets for walls, the house is cobbled together with old pieces of tin and other scraps of sheet metal gleaned from who-knows-where.  Five kids and an elderly woman living in a house measuring maybe 10 feet by twelve feet.  Poverty.  This wasn't the way it was supposed to be; it's certainly not what Grandma Ann had planned: alone, nobody to support her, five extra mouths to feed...

Grandma Ann isn't home, but looking at her house, I'm reminded of my own wealth.  In the states we were 'poor.'  We received government aid: help with food, heating...  It was easy for us to say how shameful it was that teachers were paid so poorly.  Really, we're wealthy.  We own a house house, we have health care, our kids have the opportunity for a complete education.  Our house has windows, a roof that doesn't leak, more rooms than people, a floor.  Our kids have never known hunger.  In one morning driving through desperate poverty, hunger, and squalor it's easy to see that we're filthy rich. 

I'm reminded of Luke 12:48...  Most of us know the watered-down, "From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be required."  But taken in context, it's a scary parable.  Really!  Our Western world has exceedingly great wealth; we have more than plenty.  Am I using it faithfully?

When I look at Grandma Ann's house, I am scared - 5 kids and a woman in that house!  I want to help, but I'm paralyzed.  How?  The problem is huge; houses like this litter Kenya - a stable African country.  What can we do?  Pray that we can be faithfully serving him with our lives and resources.