Which Leads To...

Putting it all aside, Jesus didn’t come to impress anybody. He came to reconcile us to God. He came through the periphery and went where there was lacking. And that has been what’s being impressed upon me these past few months. He loves the poor, the prostitutes, the addicts and the rest of the destitute that have been ostracized or forgotten by society. For instance, getting infected with HIV as a matter of fact is a life sentence. Not only physically, but may times socially as well—some of them get abandoned by their own spouses, parents and extended family. I personally wouldn’t know what I would do if I had it. Unfortunately, I see hundreds of people around me everyday. How they live with it, I can only imagine. It’s tragic to think that the people sitting in the waiting area are not really coming to see whether they have the flu or other diseases. They wait their turn to find out whether or not they’re HIV positive which I can tell them within 10 minutes of their bleeding. Fortunately, it’s not my job to tell them, since I’m not a trained counselor. Plus, I don’t speak Luganda well enough to be able to properly counsel them, anyhow. Nonetheless, Mildmay is really an amazing place. It’s a UK-based Christian hospital that specializes in HIV/AIDS palliative care. For the most part it’s an outpatient center but it has an inpatient ward for children who might need special care. But I think one of the more uplifting testimonies is the way they are being cared for by a mostly Christian staff that has a vision on how they want to serve their fellow countrymen. Their foremost goal is to reach the poor and the ignorant and to teach them about HIV/AIDS and if needed put them through antiretroviral therapy (ART) or highly-active antiretroviral therapy (HAART—as most of us know it out in the west). But more importantly, they teach them on how to live positively and see the hope in life in the case of HIV-seropositive patients. Conversely, they remind them of the consequences of their actions if they continue to live a certain type of lifestyle and emphasize abstinence, faithfulness and condom use. Some of you probably might notice the last emphasis—you know, preventive measures must still be practical. One thing that really encourages me is their willingness to bring holistic “healing” to their patients. I sometimes would sit in at one of their meetings regarding counseling problematic non-compliant patients. It’s interesting to hear how they would address the person—and if nothing else works, they would ask what their spiritual state is. And if it does need to be addressed then they would send their pastor or their imam to reach out to that particular individual. Yes, they have a resident imam on staff in order to reach out to the Muslim community—which I think is what any good Christian organization would do in this situation and I think Jesus smiles when he sees this.