Baptist Global Response

By Pamela Swithin

PIETERMARTIZBURG, South Africa – The HIV/AIDS pandemic sweeping African nations is destroying entire families – from grandparents to children. One Christian ministry, with the help of Southern Baptists, is making a difference in the lives of thousands of adults and children.

A feeding project conducted by Tabitha Ministries in Pietermartizburg, South Africa, aims to alleviate much of the suffering caused by this deadly disease by providing food and assistance to adults and children who are infected and affected by HIV/AIDS.

Most of Tabitha Ministries’ work is done in the surrounding community of Sweetwaters, where thousands of people are infected with HIV. Tabitha Ministries itself ministers to more than 4,714 children and 1,500 adults in that area. Because so many more people in Sweetwaters are in need, Tabitha Ministries focuses its limited resources on those whose needs are most desperate. A six-month segment of the feeding program used money provided by the Southern Baptist World Hunger Fund to help 645 people children and adults with no income at a cost of about 40¢ per day.

Providing food is an important ministry strategy, according to project director Gail Trollip, not only because of the pervasive hunger in Sweetwaters, but also because AIDS patients cannot fight the disease and maintain their anti-retroviral drug treatments unless they are getting a certain level of nutrition.

“Due to the devastation caused from the AIDS pandemic, many adults and children in Sweetwaters are sick and dying from the virus,” Trollip said. “When an adult becomes ill, he is no longer able to provide for himself and has no income. When it is a child, they are unable to care for themselves, as there are no longer adults to provide for them as a result of their deaths from the virus.”

Tabitha Ministries’ community efforts are built around 29 volunteer caregivers who travel Sweetwaters’ streets, checking on patients. Some of those caregivers – called “Mobile Moms” – are women who have been specially trained to work with children, many of whom live in child-headed households because their parents’ lives were claimed by AIDS.

An important aspect of the ministry is that children who are forced into the position of being heads of their household often resort to immoral or illegal ways to provide food and care for their siblings, Trollip said. Providing food relieves some of that pressure so they don’t have to struggle to survive.

In several ways, the project exemplifies the compassion of Christ for people in need, Trollip said.

“This project only responds to those who are the poorest of the poor,” Trollip said. “These are the people who are unable to work due to the fact they are sick. The project allows children to attend school instead of going out to find ways to make money or find food for themselves and their siblings. The project is able to help keep people healthier due to better nutrition and the ability to have food in order to take their ARV’s.  This project also responds to the nutritional needs of the HIV-positive caregivers, as well as the 24 AIDS orphans living at Hope Center.”

Tabitha Ministries has been working in the Sweetwaters community for almost 10 years, and each year the ministry grows as the number of those infected with HIV grows, Trollip noted. The volunteer caregivers and Mobile Moms live in the community and bring to light families in need – ones who are infected and dying from the disease and can no longer work or take care of themselves. The provision of food and assistance to these patients is essential to alleviate their suffering and for their survival.

“This ministry is a truly biblical one,” said Susan Hatfield, who with her husband, Mark, directs work in Sub-Saharan Africa for Baptist Global Response. “It helps orphans and widows in their distress, visits people who are sick and helps those who are destitute.”

The fact that Southern Baptists care enough to give to their World Hunger Fund literally makes the difference between life and death for those who receive the aid, Trollip added.

“Our grateful thanks to Southern Baptists for past assistance,” she said. “This has enabled us to serve and share Jesus with the people who are in desperate need, both physically and spiritually in the Sweetwaters Community.”

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Pamela Swithin is a collegiate correspondent for Baptist Global Response.

Donations to HIV/AIDS response projects can be made on the BGR Giving page.

This prayer alert in from BGR prayer coordinator Lori Funderburk:

Tabitha Ministries, a BGR partner in South Africa, is in need of prayer.  This ministry is under great pressure because of the needs it is trying to meet.  More and more people are relying on this ministry and the pressure of added numbers of people starving and abused is heavy.  Nearly 5,000 children in child headed households are dependent on this ministry.  Since January over 4,000 people have died in this community.  In the last week  alone, 191 people have died.  This ministry deals with the sickest of the sick and the poorest of the poor.  Will you lift them up in prayer today?

From BGR prayer coordinator Lori Funderburk’s “BGR to GO” newsletter:

In South Africa many babies are born to very young girls. Unable to care for the babies, the young girls often abandon the babies in places where they hope they will be found and cared for.

BGR partner Tabitha Ministries has placed a “Moses Box” in one of the villages where this has happened often. They also do school presentations telling girls they can leave their babies in the box. Currently they have 30 orphans, most of whom are HIV-positive.

Will you pray for the volunteers that raise these children? Ask God to continue to provide for all of their needs. Pray that a Ministry Home will be built quickly for the most vulnerable children.

To subscribe to BGR to GO send an e-mail BGRtoGO@gobgr.org. To subscribe to BGR to GO for KIDS send an e-mail to BGRtoGOforKIDS@gobgr.org.

BGR is posting helpful resources for World AIDS Day here.

Southern Baptists in Mississippi, Kentucky, and Tennessee have reached out to families in Sub-Saharan Africa that are caring for terminally ill loved ones.

A total of 1,378 five-gallon plastic buckets filled with supplies to help caregivers were packed by congregations and delivered to the Baptist Fellowship of Zambia’s human needs program and to Tabitha Ministries, an outreach that provides care to more than 1,300 HIV-positive children in a district of South Africa that has the highest per capita rate of HIV-positive individuals in the world. Earlier this year, workers at Tabitha Ministries reported they were seeing 85 to 105 people die each week.

The buckets contain a wide range of everyday supplies needed by a caregiver – from lotions, ointments, and vitamins to bedding, bandages, and thermometers. The total cost of each bucket ranged between $100 and $125.

Mark Hatfield, Baptist Global Response’s area director for Sub-Saharan Africa, sends a note to say the second shipping container of buckets has arrived in Lusaka. 

“Please pray for the Baptist Fellowship of Zambia as they begin to clear the container through customs. Pray for duty-free status and an easy process,” Mark writes. “Pray that the use of these items by loving caregivers will show the love and compassion Jesus Christ has for the terminally ill. Pray that they would come to know the True Hope that comes from a personal relationship with him.”

The items in the buckets will be a tremendous blessing to families that must care for terminally ill relatives at home because access to health care is so limited. And although there are more than 22.5 million adults and children in Sub-Saharan Africa who are living with the HIV virus, the need extends beyond even those families. Thousands of people in the region die at home each year from sicknesses like cancer, tuberculosis, malaria, and other life-ending diseases. In-home care is all the care they will receive.

So to the churches in Mississippi, Kentucky, and Tennessee that helped with this pilot project, almost 1,400 families in Africa shout a hearty “Thank you!”

If you or your church would like to participate in the 2009 phase of this project, please e-mail Dennis Eastridge at deastridge@gobgr.org.

This note just in from Lori Funderburk, BGR’s international prayer strategist:

“Several months ago, BGR initiated a pilot program encouraging Southern Baptist churches in Kentucky, Mississippi, and Tennessee to pack In-Home Care kits that would be distributed among caregivers for people with terminal illnesses such as AIDS.  The BGR area director for Africa reportsthat the container holding 739 five-gallon buckets (weighing 7,390 pounds) has been shipped.

Please pray that the transport of these much needed materials will be quick and the customs and duty processes would be easy and inexpensive.

Also ask God to bless the hands that will be distributing these buckets as well as the hands that will be receiving them.

Mark Hatfield, BGR’s area director for Sub-Saharan Africa, sent us a statistic the other day that just really rocked me back on my heels. He picked the item up from a prayer newsletter he receives.

“Concerning AIDS orphans: 30 percent of the children in Swaziland are either single or double orphans [meaning either one or both parents have died of AIDS]. The number of orphans in the country has increased from an estimated 12,000 in 1999 to 70,000 in 2005 with a projected increase to 120,000 by 2010. The number of child-headed households [children living in homes without adults] is increasing.”

It staggers the imagination to think of the grief and responsibilities these children are bearing at a time in life when they ought to be playing happily and enjoying their friends and families. I’m grateful we have ways to help them – and people who care enough to reach out to them from the United States. It’s always gratifying to see that so many believers understand that caring for orphans and widows in their troubles is “pure and genuine religion” in the sight of God the Father. (James 1:27)

Many of us can touch the lives of these orphans by giving, and some of us are in the position of actually going to help them personally. But every one of us can help them by praying.

The note Mark sent ends like this:

“Pray the many orphans in Swaziland will have someone to care for them.  Pray for an intense awareness by the Swazis of the causes and problems of AIDS and the responsibility of protecting friends and family members.”

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To learn more about Baptist Global Response, visit our website at gobgr.org.