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October 2000
Dear Friends and Family,
A wet, drizzly weekend has forced me indoors to do what I’ve
been promising to do for months now, write you an update of some
of the activities I’ve been involved in. There are three
things in particular I want to share with you today—a church
involvement, a work development and a personal celebration—so
let’s get going.
First, unless you’ve been stuck in a cave in Siberia you
are no doubt aware of the HIV/AIDS epidemic that is full-blown
in sub-Saharan Africa, now including South Africa. The figures
are almost beyond the mind’s grasping: South Africa has 4.2
million people living with HIV/AIDS, the largest number in the
world. The adult HIV prevalence rate is almost 20 percent. Of
infected adults, 56 percent are women. There were 250,000 adult
and child AIDS deaths in 1999 alone, and the cumulative number
of AIDS orphans had risen to 420,000. Each day in South Africa
alone 1,700 babies are born HIV positive. Combine a virus that
does not make its presence known until diseases overcome its victims—possibly
10 years down the line—with a stigma that makes people fear
revelation, and you’ve got a deadly combination whose impact
will be felt for generations to come.
Church
It is into this area that I hope to develop a future ministry/work
involvement and, in order to explore this possibility, I have
applied for a year’s extension. Many in my local church here
in South Africa have felt challenged to become involved in AIDS
work and are developing a relationship with a women’s committee
in a local township area that has established a shelter for 30-40
pre-school children impacted by AIDS.
Their families cannot afford to send them to a local creche (informal
preschool), so the women provide them two simple meals a day,
care for them, teach them, play with them, love and protect them
for those few hours. The church’s role is to provide the
food and contribute clothes, toys, teaching materials, and other
basics to assist them in their project. We also are committed
to be their friends—to laugh and cry with them, lend an ear,
pray with and for them, and be there when they need us. And it
is our blessing!
It is my firm belief that God is providing an opportunity—
in the midst of the horror of it—for the Church to redeem
itself from its past sins of omission and commission and show
itself anew as Christ in the world. God certainly didn’t
create this madness, but He is with us in the midst of it and,
as my pastor has said, we need to be "Jesus with skin on"
to those in need—loving, caring, compassionate, present.
Work
My work with Michael Cassidy, founder and international team
leader of Africa Enterprise, took an unexpected turn this year
when we decided to pursue a weekly radio program in which he addresses
current issues from a Christian perspective. Michael has a wonderful
way of looking openly at various aspects of an issue, then looking
to Scripture to reveal God’s view on it. My role, as his
research and writing assistant, has been to assist him in just
that way, addressing such divergent issues as corruption, AIDS,
euthanasia, fatherhood, pornography, abortion, etc, hopefully
educating, encouraging and challenging listeners in their attitudes
and thinking.
Celebrating Marriage
Ooops—no, not mine, at least not yet! But that of my Mom
and Dad, who celebrated 60 years of marriage this June. Too amazing,
isn’t it! You’ll even catch them holding hands now and
then and, though they say now it’s to keep each other from
falling down, don’t believe that’s the whole of it.
The love and respect of those first years is still there, just
deeper and matured with their history. And all worth celebrating,
which we did in July, gathering family and friends of a lifetime
to honor each of them and their life together. Congratulations
still, Mom and Dad! Don’t know where I’d be without
you!
Let me close with part of a reading that challenges me and blesses
me now and again. The Lord here reminds me to: "Trust Me,
My child. Trust Me with a humbler heart and a fuller abandon to
My will than you ever did before. Trust Me to pour My love through
you, as minute succeeds minute. And if you’re conscious of
anything hindering the flow, do not hurt My love by going away
from Me in discouragement. Nothing can hurt love so much as that.
Draw all the closer to Me, flee to Me to hide you, even from yourself.
Tell me about it. Trust Me to remove the boulder that has choked
your river-bed and take away all the sand that has silted up the
channel. I will not leave you. I will perfect that which concerns
you. Fear not, O child of My love; fear not."
What a Friend. What a God. He loves us soooo much He’ll
never leave us, but He loves us too much to leave us as we are.
May He bless you and me in the days to come in ways beyond our
imagining.
With love,
Cindy Easterday
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