Dear Friends,

Our fondest Easter greetings to you. There is wonderful "good news" today to share with all. He lives! He lives! Christ Jesus actually lives
today! Comprehending this "Easter morning reality" yet being witnesses to this "Good Friday world" requires a miraculous but liberating
transformation in our perspective of things around us. Those who are permitted, by the grace of God, the faith to believe this are awed
with the wonder of it. Easter allows us to clearly perceive God’s redemptive love for us and mankind. This wondrous love gives us
refreshing hope, joy, and attentive peace that calls us to share with others in need.

Some of you have asked us to send information about our mutual effort in mission here so you might share it with your church congregation as "a minute for mission."

Attached is our reply and suggestion, "Take Five for Mission!"

"We" the hand and eyes;

"You" the tongue and voice;

"We all" joined in mutual mission together as the church and body of Christ attempting to follow God’s will as we’re permitted to understand it. Although we together in Presbyterian mission are often discouraged and have a sense of futility in our inadequacies, we believe that what we are attempting to do together is good and pleasing to God. Here in central Africa you are involved with us in a struggle against a great and formidable foe.

Infection with the HI virus, which eventually leads to the terrible diseases associated with AIDS, is rampant here. Here are some recent news reports about central and south Africa. Twenty percent of my hospitalized patients are infected by it. The disease is an unimaginable horror of horrors for them and their families. I quote and paraphrase:

AIDS is the biggest threat to Africa’s development, according to the United Nations. One reason is the large numbers of people in key leadership and development roles who are dying: teachers, farmers, health-workers, civil servants, young professionals. Here are some actual statistics about HIV/AIDS in Africa for 2001.

• 3.4 million new infections in Africa alone (70% of the world’s total cases)
  
• 2.3 million deaths last year alone, and rate of infection is increasing.
  
• 28 million people now infected with HIV/AIDS here are expected to die slow, painful, and dishonorable deaths over the coming years, with no hope of a cure.
  
• In South Africa, one of Africa’s most developed countries, the average life expectancy is now 47 years and falling off rapidly. If AIDS didn’t exist, life expectancy would be about 62 years.
  
• 44% of pregnant urban women in Botswana are HIV+ . Half of their new-born babies will become infected during the birthing process and by subsequent breast feeding. Half of these newborn infections can now be prevented with a single dose of inexpensive but generally unavailable medicine.
  
• Sub-Saharan Africa is by far the world’s worst affected area according to the UNAIDS and World Health Organization’s latest report on the disease.
  
• Even in relatively peaceful Kenya, a study by the Population Council said that more than half of the HIV-infected women surveyed reported they had not confided with their sexual partners regarding their infection for fear of being beaten or abandoned. Many infected men refuse to take precautions for infecting their wives (or other women) because of denial, male ego, and a general low regard for the value of women.
  
• In 1999, African children lost 860,000 of their school teachers because of this disease.

There are several social customs and practices here in Congo which encourage the spread of HIV.

One is the unchallenged and abusive social practices which treat women as very inferior to men. Women have little social value, few rights, and minimal privileges when compared to men. Polygamy is widely practiced with all its resulting abuses and expressions regarding the woman’s place and value in a male-oriented society.

The second is the habit of marital couples to stop having sexual intercourse after the birth of a child. When the newborn child walks upright and/or the woman stops nursing (average time here is two to three years) the couple can again have sexual intercourse. In the meantime, if the husband brings home a chicken and gives it to his wife she is obligated to allow him the privilege of sex outside the marriage relationship until she stops nursing.

The third is poverty and AIDS itself.

There is little employment opportunity for men and practically none for women outside their labors at home. Part of this is due to the centuries-old customs and habits of hunting and gathering in a bountiful land with a kind climate. Gardening and gathering and scavenging has become the current lifestyle, which results in the widespread destruction of Africa’s animals. This subsistence farming is done by the women in small family-garden plots. There is insufficient trust and confidence between individuals outside the immediate family for collective farming initiatives. There is little understanding or acceptance of cooperation, collaboration, sharing, and strategic planning
among groups of persons for the mutual benefit of all. For example, there are no working banks, post offices, telephones, or transportation systems as we would recognize them. This makes it extremely difficult for the development of businesses, productive farms, industries, or the marketing of goods and services. Thus, there are few jobs that pay a salary.

Men who can find work often do so far from home and family. Examples are long-distance, heavy-duty hauling, working in the government’s gold, diamond, or coltan mines, and finding work in the cities. It is widely accepted that men will have other wives if they work far from home. The AIDS epidemic has produced millions of widows and orphans who must eat and do anything else to cling to life itself. Prostitution is widespread but not called by that name. Married men working far from home become asymptomatically infected with HIV for many years before the manifestations of AIDS become apparent. We frequently find that most wives become infected by the time the disease is recognized in the husband. He then dies but leaves destitute families, widows and children. The women often are forced to trade sexual favors for money to feed and clothe their families, and thereby infect the men who come to them.

Most of the marriages we have attended or know about are between pregnant young women and men. Sex before marriage appears to be quite usual and acceptable.

These problems are causing much suffering and hardship. The status quo needs to be challenged. We have no right answers or solutions but we do ask questions and influence discussions by our presence and relationships. We do not have the wisdom to know what is best for this society and people, but can encourage them to make the effort to find their way. We offer them our understanding, our support, our love and concern. We trust the rest to them and God.

We are trying to do two things to stem this tide.

First, discussing HIV/AIDS is uncomfortable and generally avoided by people. We have found a way to interject interest in discussing the topic by the church pastors and youth.

We are providing soccer balls and air pumps to local pastors if they will start discussions with adolescent girls and boys about HIV/AIDS in their respective churches. We supply the HIV/AIDS literature, the talks, and encourage the pastors and elders in the church to discuss the merits of this approach to educating and protecting their youth. This gives pastors and congregations an excuse to broach discussions on the subject in an acceptable way. It teaches AIDS prevention to the youth in their communities in a very popular and acceptable way. We have six or eight churches now forming inter-church competition, and we have exhausted our small stock of soccer balls. The program is quite popular and exciting to watch in Kananga City. We are planning to "carry the ball" on to our 30 scattered Kasai community health centers in the rural areas. We are assisting Presbyterian pastors doing this work in town and in these villages.

Second, we are encouraging confidential prenatal counseling to encourage pregnant women to secretly test themselves for the virus before the birth of their babies. We will supply one tablet of Nevirapine to those with positive tests at the time of their labor and a third of one tablet to the newborn on the third day of it’s life. This medicine reduces linear transmission of the virus to the newborn baby by more than 50%.

So, our eyes and hands,

your tongue and voice in the congregation, and

our hearts, together with the risen and living Lord’s, are at work to accomplish those things ordained at this, yet another Easter awakening.

What a wonderful thing, indeed.

Grace and Peace,

Bill and Sue Sager

The 2002 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 29