Mission Statement

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The Mission

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The Reality...
One morning sitting in my home office in South Africa I

was disturbed by the sound of a small voice calling from the front gate. I went out to investigate and there was this little girl and a toddler. I asked what she wanted and she asked if I had any spare bread. My first response was to ask why she was not in school. She said her mother could not afford to send her. "What is your name?" I asked. "Beauty" she said.
"How old are you?"
"Ten".
"Have you ever been to school? "
"No."
"How old is your little brother?"
"Three years."
"Have you had anything to eat at all today?"
"No."
"Where is your mother now?"
"Looking for work."
"Where do you live?"
"In a deserted house in town."
I invited them in and fed them breakfast. My heart was so crushed with the reality of what I was witnessing that I had to leave the room to weep in secret. "Father, how did it come to this?" My heart cried. "How do we bring this to an end?" "How do we stop this downward spiral?" The confirmation is clear. It is not the symptom that we have been called to address, but the very root. "...freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed and to claim the year of the Lord's favor." Little "Beauty" is just one of the 100,000 children in South Africa whose "eyes are blind" because their minds have not been awakened to the knowledge that will set them free. These are the children of the "shadow lands" that will grow up only to perpetuate the vicious cycle...

During our four year assignment back in South Africa (1999 - 2003) we were struck by the reality of the need...far beyond our wildest imagination.
South Africa is neglecting most of the 100,000 children born there every year with HIV/AIDS and half of them are likely to die before the age of 2 (a senior U.N. official)

http://www.christiantoday.com/article/un.south.africa.neglects.children.in.aids.fight/13808.htm

Aids is no respecter of age or class. We have seen people of all ages and class ravaged by the disease. In South Africa over 100,000 children have been left without teachers due to premature death from AIDS. There are hundreds of thousands of "AIDS Orphans". By the end of 2006 40,000 more teachers will have died of AIDS leaving even more children "teacher less"
By the end of 2005, there were five and a half million people living with HIV in South Africa, and almost 1,000 AIDS deaths occurring every day.¹

South Africa's AIDS orphans could lose mothers a second time
The 1 million AIDS orphans in South Africa - the country with the fastest growing rate of HIV infection in the world - are a growing problem, the Guardian (UK) has reported (August 3). The "cash-strapped" health care system in South Africa must rely on private institutions to help care for AIDS orphans, many of whom are HIV-positive themselves. One such organization, the Mohau Children's Care Centre in Pretoria, looks after 2,500 children whose mothers are HIV-positive. Director Barry Hughes-Gibbs says few are willing to adopt the children, and the most likely candidates to care for HIV-positive children are women who are themselves HIV-positive, which presents the danger of an orphaned child losing a second mother to AIDS. In South Africa, single black women make up the single largest category of HIV carriers. (UN Wire, August 4 1999)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/static/in_depth/africa/2000/aids_in_africa/casestudy_sa.stm
http://www.globalhealthreporting.org
http://www.news24.com/News24/South_Africa/Aids_Focus/0,,2-7-659_1842561,00.html
http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2000/aids/stories/women.children/
Cholera is now a new threat as the squalor has begun to infect the waters of the streams that "squatters" depend on for washing and drinking.
Tuberculosis has reached almost epidemic proportions in certain areas because of the added immune deficiency.
Poverty is escalating as millions find themselves without work...most do not have the skills necessary to secure even the most basic employment. Our hearts break to see toddlers that have to stand on their little toes to tap on the car windows at the traffic lights to ask for food.
http://www.kff.org/hivaids/upload/7365.pdf
Education is becoming a major crisis as more and more teachers are dying of AIDS and more and more AIDS orphans are being "passed by" by the educational system that is ill equipped to handle specialist cases.
"Squatter Camps" (Shanty Towns) litter the country side as people move to the cities in the hopes of finding some relief only to find that things are worse than where they came from.
Babies are abandoned by mothers that have no hope of being able to feed and care for them. One of the churches in the city has designed a small "Door" in one of the walls just big enough to pass an infant through so that desperate mothers can place their new born babies where they can be taken care of "no questions asked", rather than dump them in the nearest alley or trash can. The place has become known as "The Door Of Hope" and the authorities turn a blind eye, realizing that they do not have a better plan.

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