The AIDS Experience

Last Sunday I decided to try out one of the churches back home again, since my sister was looking to start going to church somewhere in her neighborhood and there's one literally 500 feet from her house. Last year I had tried it out and thought the service was pretty cool, but I was a little turned off by the liberal-bashing in the Sunday School class I attended, where it was repeatedly hinted at that Obama may be the Antichrist.

Besides all of that being Biblically unsound from what I've read (feel free to correct me, but I just don't think Barack Obama makes the cut), at the time I had just acquired my liberal side and I didn't like that being beat over my head repeatedly when the class was supposed to be talking about something entirely different. I don't go to Sunday School to talk about politics, I go because I want to talk about Jesus. If I wanted to talk about politics, I'd just walk outside of my room in Bloomington.

At the end of the service, they played a neat little video during the offering (which was another heavy-hitter throughout the morning's service that "the church should never be in financial trouble") about World Vision's AIDS Experience. (Ironically, it was being held at the church I went to for most of the summer last year after the first one left a bitter taste in my mouth.) The whole thing sounded really neat, plus 1) it was free and 2) only ten churches in the country get to host this thing every year, so it's kind of a big deal that it's in Evansville.

So today I went to check it out.

When you walk in, you're given a little MP3 player and some headphones and you walk into this little hut facing four curtains. Each player has a story told by 1 of 4 children, and you get to experience their life as a child. You make your way through different rooms in this little maze as you hear the story of the child's life, and in each room you get to see what their "home" was like and how rough life is for them.

My child's name was Emmanuel. His father died of AIDS when he was young, and his mother also died from AIDS when he was only a few years old, so he and his 9-year-old brother were left to fend for themselves. They went to his mother's family for help, but they just blamed the childrens' father for killing the mother and told them that they'd soon die, so they stole everything they had. At the end of the story, each child goes to the health clinic to get tested for HIV. Luckily, my child tested negative.

To be perfectly honest, every time I think of AIDS, I think of homosexuals and drug addicts, and honestly I feel like that's really all that gets put out about AIDS. Going through the "experience" took away all of the modern spins of HIV and AIDS and allowed me to see what's going on in a completely different light. I think it's really hard for middle- and upper-class Americans to think of AIDS outside of the homosexual and drug addict stereotypes and see what's going on in Africa for what it really is.

Maybe supporting AIDS research isn't your thing. Maybe this blog pisses you off because there's enough going on in America for us to be focusing on some little country on the other side of the world. And that's fine, you don't have to agree with me. All I ask of you is that you look into this or something else, and invest your time or--if you have the capability--the money to do something about something you feel strongly about. Maybe it's 9-year-old children in Africa left to be the head of their household because both their parents died of AIDS and their families disowned them. Maybe it's your local soup kitchen. I can't answer that for you, but you can.

So go find your answer, and put your beliefs into action, whatever they may be.