A letter from Janet Guyer in South Africa
December 2010
Christmas is coming ... and as I sit in the Cape Town airport waiting for my last flight home this year I will start this letter. The Presbyterian Church of Africa (PCA) is holding a meeting for their pastors and invited me to do a piece on HIV and AIDS. There were many questions and comments: “What should the church’s stance be on condoms?,” “Is it proper for an older minister to talk about such things (that is, ‘sex’)?,” “Can HIV infected people have children?,” “Do you think that AIDS is racist?” We did get some interesting discussions going. Perhaps the highlight of the morning was when an older minister who had been asking many questions commented toward the end of the session as he was diligently copying something off the board, that he had become a new convert — to the need to address HIV and AIDS in the church). It will be interesting to see how that plays out in his and other participants’ circuits/congregations.
With parents Betsy and John Guyer.
Now for my confession and apology: I was sure that I had written two letters this year but it seems that I have only written one. Sorry. Next year I will do better and this one will be a bit long.
The trip to the United States in April and May was great. The highlight, of course, was seeing my family and getting to spend a bit of time with them. All seem to be holding their own.
While in the United States I attended a workshop at Educational Concerns for Hunger Organization ECHO, an organization that does training in tropical agriculture as a means of addressing world hunger. I attended the training for complete newcomers to the topic (as was fitting). It was fascinating. I had hoped that they would do more that was HIV and AIDS related but what they did do was helpful. I am still planning to do a nutrition and HIV and AIDS workshop for women’s leaders, youth leaders and HIV and AIDS coordinators but am not sure when that will happen. Stay tuned.
Brother Jim and nephew Matt Guyer.
The World Cup Football/Soccer Tournament was fabulous. People, including me, who usually don’t have much time for the sport became avid fans of favorite teams, sometimes chosen at random depending on who was still in the tournament. South Africans, as a nation, really pulled together, got along together and the crime rate even dropped. Everything ran well and left the country in a haze of national pride. As all good things must do, that has come to an end but we still smile when we remember those days.
During the World Cup, travel was not possible so afterwards it was back on the road again.
Workshops
A workshop in Cape Town on Healing of Memories was very interesting. The Healing of Memories foundation was started after the change over from the old to the new dispensation here in South Africa governments. The founder, an Anglican priest who had been the recipient of a letter bomb and was badly hurt, saw the need for people who had suffered abuse of one type or another to have a place to talk about it, to help heal their memories. Many of the basic foundations on which the program is built were very similar to those used in counselling sexually abused women from my internship in Pittsburgh years ago.
Another workshop was held in Malawi by the Ecumenical HIV and AIDS Initiative in Africa (EHAIA), a program of the World Council of Churches. The topic: Transformative Masculinities. Generally targeting men, the coordinator, a friend, graciously invited me to attend (after I had begged to come). The workshop was my first of what I hope will be many forays into looking at issues of gender and masculinity and especially the role that men play in preventing HIV and AIDS. It is a topic that churches are having trouble addressing, but face it we must if we are to make progress in addressing HIV and AIDS.
Not long after the workshop, the World Communion of Reformed Churches launched a manual —Created in God’s Image: From Hegemony to Partnership — looking at the same topic. It seems to provide concrete suggestions for how to help people work though the question of masculinity and what it means to be a man today. I look forward to using it with some of our partners.
The other workshop was actually a training of trainers, Churches Channels of Hope, put on by the Christian AIDS Bureau of Southern Africa (CABSA). It is something that I had long wanted to attend but frankly, always thought that it was over priced and besides I could probably teach it myself. I still think it is expensive but understand why because they have a high trainee to trainer ratio, a very intensive program and lasted a very full six days. In the end, I’m glad that I had attended thanks to EMPACT Africa (more on them later) and a grant from CABSA. As for whether I learned anything new, what was most significant for me was the way in which they presented concepts and the perspective they brought to the training. Their focus is on developing churches into communities of hope. I used several of their ideas in the PCA workshop.
Country visits
It hasn’t been only a time for workshops but I find that I really enjoyed learning new things and being able to evaluate what I was already doing from new perspectives. Of late, there have been several country visits as well.
Lesotho: In the past few months I have made a couple trips to Lesotho primarily to visit the Reverend Motumi who is the AIDS coordinator for the Lesotho Evangelical Church. Lesotho has the third highest HIV infection rate in the world. About 23 percent of the people between the ages of 15 and 49 are HIV infected, so the church has a huge challenge to know how best to reach out to the communities in which they find themselves. Thanks to the PC(USA) International Health and Development Office and CABSA, the Rev. Motumi was also able to attend the CABSA training. It will be of great help for him in his work.
Malawi: In the second half of the year I made two trips to Malawi; the first in September and the second in November. In September I spent most of my time in Blantyre and Nkhoma Synods. The HIV and AIDS offices in both Synods have gone through some challenging times but both are now moving toward being well-functioning, productive entities. Each synod found different ways to do this. For Blantyre Synod, the AIDS office has been incorporated into the Blantyre Synod Health and Development Commission and is under very competent leadership.
For Nkhoma Synod the AIDS Office has been closed in its previous form and the various functions of the office have been mainstreamed into different departments of the synod. This means that the youth work is now in the Youth Department, the gender work is in the Church and Society Department and the prevention and home-based care work is in the Public Health Department. Once a month representatives from all the departments doing AIDS work get together for strategic planning so that they can all be informed on what each other is doing and work collaboratively. Quite an innovative plan, actually, and it will be interesting to see how it works.
Interviewing a client and guardian.
While in Nkhoma in September it became clear that an evaluation of the home-based care project in Kongwe Presbytery was needed. This is a home-based care project that I had worked with closely in the past but have not visited for a while. In November, three people from the Nkhoma Synod Public Health Department, a member of the former AIDS Department and I spent several days in Kongwe Presbytery meeting with congregational leaders, home-based care volunteers and clients to see if and how well the project was still running.
We have not finished doing the final evaluation of the data collected but I suspect we will find it is a mixed bag with regard to how active the volunteers have continued to be when they had been left to work on their own. It will certainly give us many things to think about in planning the way forward for this home-based care project and others.
When preaching in a church in Blantyre one Sunday there was an announcement that the team that was going to visit the prison would be leaving right after church. In Thailand I had done some prison visiting so thought it would be interesting to see what visiting the prison in Blantyre was like here. I could write paragraphs about how they are the same and different but must say that the situation in Thailand was in many ways more conducive to conversation than the situation in Malawi. However, the experience of watching about a thousand prisoners singing praise songs and dancing was something we would never have experienced in Thailand and was quite a sight to behold.
Livingstonia Synod was on the agenda for both trips. However on the first trip the day I was to go visit the offices, there were two funerals so everyone was out. The second day, when I was to go visit LISAP, the Livingstonia Synod AIDS Program, it was my turn to get a tummy bug so was not able to go anywhere. The November trip to Livingstonia Synod was more successful. I had a good meeting with the general secretary and the deputy general secretary as well as the director of the Women’s Department. Unfortunately the person I had hoped to meet at LISAP had an unexpected trip to Holland so was not in. Next time.
South Africa: World AIDS Day is on December 1, which fell on a Wednesday this year. Therefore churches that chose to celebrate/commemorate it did so either the Sunday before or the Sunday after December 1. I was invited to celebrate with a congregation of the Lesotho Evangelical Church in Soweto, one of the largest townships in South Africa and is just outside Johannesburg. When I walked in the door, what a sight! The entire congregation was wearing red, often with black and/or white.
After the service, there were presentations by various organizations that provide HIV and AIDS related services in the area and the Mother’s Union brought some food to give to a local hospice. It had also been arranged to have a counselling and testing site set up so people could go and get tested not only for HIV but also diabetes and hypertension any time during the service or the program. I would guess that about a quarter of the people who were present availed themselves of this service.
After the presentations there was a candle light memorial service for people who have died of HIV-related illnesses. Looking over the congregation and knowing the statistics I would guess that almost everyone there had most likely lost a family member to AIDS and certainly all had lost friends making the brief service very meaningful.
Looking Ahead
In the coming years there are several programs that you may be interested in watching out for and following their progress. For differing reasons, I am really quite excited about all of them. Here I will give you a thumbnail sketch of what each entails. You will certainly hear more about all of them over time.
Community Health Evangelism (CHE): In a nutshell, CHE is a program in which volunteers from the community are trained on an issue of health along with a biblical teaching that correlates with the health teaching to share with their neighbors. In this way health outreach and evangelism are joined into one enterprise. The volunteers are given oversight by a committee in the community that not only supports the volunteers but also considers what issues are pertinent for the community. The only role for outsiders is to provide training for both the volunteers and for the committee and to be there as a support for the committee. In speaking with our partners about CHE they have all been very excited to implement it in their area. To learn more about CHE you can go to the LifeWind International website.
“Footprints” Training of Trainers: The Footprints project is one that the Evangelical Presbyterian Church in South Africa (EPCSA) is working on. I have shared about it with you in the past. We are doing presbytery by presbytery HIV and AIDS training for representatives of all congregations. The representatives then return to their congregations and share what they have learned. Together with their congregations, they will also consider what their congregations can do to make a difference in their communities. We have already trained two of the seven presbyteries and are looking forward to doing more next year. It has been a wonder how the training of just these two presbyteries has impacted the whole church. For example, the EPCSA has decided that all its congregations should do something to commemorate World AIDS Day as well as having a Candle Light Memorial Service in May.
EMPACT Africa: EMPACT stands for EMpowering PAstors to Act. It is a faith-based organization that started life in the Westlake Hills Presbyterian Church in Austin, Texas, and is now a not-for-profit organization. EMPACT’s mission is to empower pastors in sub-Saharan Africa to be able to fight stigma and discrimination in the local congregations and through them to the communities. This is achieved through workshops focusing specifically on stigma and discrimination, targeted to pastors and other congregational leaders. The first phase of their project, training congregational leaders in the Reformed Church in Zambia, was successful beyond what anyone imagined. The second and third phases will be with Presbyterian partner churches. First, the Church of Central Africa Presbyterian (CCAP) Synod of Zambia and then a group of Presbyterian partner churches here in South Africa and Lesotho.
The first week in November the HIV and AIDS coordinators of five Presbyterian partner churches gathered for a week to work together to develop an outline for the workshops that will be presented to the congregational leaders in this area. Because EMPACT is working with Presbyterian partner churches and because I can see a lot of potential for these trainings, I will be spending a good bit of time working on this project. If you want to learn more about EMPACT you can go to the EMPACT Africa website.
Mary, Joseph and Baby Jesus at Legae, Community Childcare Project Christmas program.
And so as the year draws to an end so does this letter. I have been home for a week now, settling back into being home and preparing for Christmas tomorrow. Tunes from the Messiah have been running though my head of late and the one that sticks with me is the passage from Isaiah:
For unto us a child is born ... and his name shall be called ... prince of peace.
The wee babe was born with so many important names to live into! The one that has me pondering is the “prince of peace”. It has been a long time since seminary Hebrew but I wonder if the word “peace” here is actually the Hebrew word “shalom” with meanings so far beyond what we consider to be peace. Goodness knows that our world could do with more peace but shalom also speaks of wholeness and health and right relationships also desperately needed today. And so my wish for you is that your Christmas may be joy-filled and that the peace, the shalom, of the Prince of Peace may permeate your life in the year to come.
Blessings,
Janet
The Rev. Janet Guyer
Regional HIV and AIDS Consultant for Southern Africa
Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)
The 2011 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 74
Editor’s note
Send gifts to support Janet’s ministry as HIV/AIDS Consultant for Southern Africa to:
Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)
P.O. Box 643700
Pittsburgh, PA 15264-3700Checks should be made out to “Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)”. Please note “E200351” in the memo field. [You can alway give online, too. See the give box in the left column of every page. —Ed.]
