Well, we never could have dreamt what would open up with this unploughed ground. We have been here since Sept. Already, we are ministering to approximately 20-25,000 students per month in the Soweto public school system with the full blessing of the Ministry of Education. We did the presentation for about 300 top educators recently which was so well received. Let me give you an example that happened just yesterday. It probably was one of the best days for students' response, and one of the hardest days in spiritual battles. In the 1st 20 minutes at a Soweto High School, someone threw a tear-gas bomb in the window so we had to evacuate half the crowd of about 600 students. But, it soon went on again to find some kids blowing up condoms and floating them around the room. We soon got that stopped! Afterwards, crowds of matric (grade 12) boys gathered around my wife and seriously began to ask questions like, "How can we stay sexually pure until we are married if people will think we aren't a man if we don't have sex?" One girl came up after session II (we often have 4 sessions back to back in 1 day covering about 2000 students per day). She was shaking like a leaf and said, "My father has already arranged my marriage to my boyfriend. But he forces me to have sex and I know he sleeps around and I want to know if I can get AIDS? My father would beat me if I told him and my boyfriend would lie, what do I do?" She then broke down and sobbed and sobbed for about 5 minutes before she could even look up. Belva put her arms around this young grade 11 girl and prayed for her and then gave her our phone #. We are now feeling that somehow we will have to set up a counseling center for maybe 1/2 day per week in there.
The police provided us with body guards for our sessions at Soweto at no charge and as a result of this, on May 21 we will be doing phase I of AIDS prevention presentations giving the gospel to the Soweto police force. We also have been in Botswana, Zimbabwe and Swaziland training the local pastors so they can go back into their communities and preach godly living to their communities/congregations! We have made up a fairly professional pastor's packet on AIDS teaching and distribute this free to all church workers who take the course. It just is amazing the doors for not only AIDS prevention, but for sharing the good news of Jesus! Literally, we cannot keep up with the invitations and already are fully booked for 1 year and well into next year.
In both Botswana and Zimbabwe (July 20-22 in Zimbabwe) we will do a follow-up crusade in the largest hall in Harare, capital city. The emphasis will be AIDS prevention/awareness for community education. However, a number of churches will be involved where we are bringing in 1 Christian psychologist who was infected by her husband who has a documented healing from HIV infection (husband died). We expect church people as well as the general population to be there for this 2 day AIDS Awareness campaign. We will conduct a 2nd day salvation and healing service as a follow-up to the AIDS awareness campaign. It will be a packed house and we ask for your prayers. A similar event is being formulated for Gabarone, capital of Botswana, as a follow up to our time there more recently.
The Swaziland outreach was amazing! After doing 10 hours at the Bible college in classes along with an exam, we were on transworld radio and subsequently met the Head Physician and the Evangelical Ministerial Executive for that country. After hearing the presentation they have invited us to do training for a bulk of the Swaziland ministers at a yearly event taking place May 28th. Our presentation will be 3 hours of AIDS awareness training. They are arranging for us to do a presentation to the House of Parliament in the near future. Please pray for that.
Several of the non-Christian principals in Soweto are meeting with the civic leaders to put together a community AIDS awareness evening where the school PTA's, teachers, parents, and community leaders will be present to hear the presentation. Of course, it is full of the gospel and sharing about Jesus. We need your prayers for that also!
In short, God uses even AIDS to demonstrate to people everywhere that He came that they might have LIFE and have it more abundantly! This is our purpose throught the medium of AIDS awareness. What an opportunity and we are privileged to be a part!
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