A letter from Janet Guyer on home assignment from South Africa
April 21, 2012
Greetings from California. This letter has probably travelled the farthest in the process of being written of any Southern Cross update to date. It was started in South Africa, made a trip with me to Malawi, and now here I am in California!
Coming to the United States
I will be here in the U.S. until the first week of September. I will be in the Southern California area until a week or two after Easter and will be dropping back into this area from time to time over the next six months. If there are churches in this area that would like me to come visit, please let me know and we can, as they say in South Africa, make a plan.
I plan to be in the Northwest, Oregon actually, for the next week or so. May and June and then a couple Sundays in August I will be available to speak in the East (which for me is anything east of the Mississippi).
If you would like me to visit, please let me know as soon as possible so I can arrange my dates.
People often ask, "So what do you do when you visit a congregation?" Actually, I can be quite flexible. What I have done in the past ranges from preaching, PowerPoint presentations, talking with Sunday school classes or groups… I am willing to give just about anything a try. You can contact me at either my cell number for my time here in the U.S.—1 626 841-1246—or through email at janet.guyer@pcusa.org.
Recently I stood in a circle of women holding hands. It was a circle of remembering for a woman who had lost her fight with HIV-related illnesses the day before. I didn’t know her personally but I did know her, a poor woman who was struggling not only to live but to live a quality life. Again it was a reminder that in this day and time, when there is so much good news about what we know about HIV and how to use this knowledge, people are still being left behind. Standing there, I was heartbroken for the family and friends, frustrated and angry that in 2012 people are still dying of what should be chronic conditions. May God give us the strength and wisdom to care for God’s people better!
Compassionate Churches Campaign
Often when people are talking about HIV and how to prevent infection or how to help encourage those who may be living with the virus but do not yet know it to get tested, they will say something to the effect of “If we could just address stigma, the rest would be easy.” Fear of being stigmatized and discriminated against is a great killer. For fear of what others will say or do, people do not go to get tested to learn their HIV status early enough, when there is still time to easily bring the situation under control. Fear of stigma and discrimination keep people who know their HIV status from getting the medical help and emotional support they need. Although in the 10 years I have been in Southern Africa I have seen some positive changes, there is still a long way to go.
Four of our partner churches, in collaboration with EMPACT Africa, have taken on the challenge to empower congregations within their denominations to become more compassionate churches. Being a compassionate church means welcoming all people as sisters and brothers in Christ, including those living with HIV and their families.
EMPACT Africa is a faith-based organization that grew out of the commitment of a team of Presbyterian Church members who were on a mission trip to Zambia. Through discussions on training and stigma with the church they were visiting the team came to see the need to address stigma and caught the vision for this organization. EMPACT Africa has now developed into an ecumenical agency. (You can find more about EMPACT Africa at www.empactafrica.org.)
The launch of EMPACT Africa’s Compassionate Churches Campaign was held in November with the top leadership of the four participating denominations. The Evangelical Presbyterian Church of South Africa was in attendance. The launch was comprised of about six hours of highlights from the four-day training and a celebratory dinner. I was personally thrilled (as were others) at the turnout and at the enthusiasm of the leadership for the Campaign and the encouragement they gave and have continued to give their HIV and AIDS coordinators and those of us who are working to support the coordinators.
Since then, six training events have been held in three of the four denominations. Perhaps the best way to summarize them is to quote two participants. During our closing worship we give people the opportunity to say a few words about what the experience was like for them or anything that they want to say. One woman got up in tears and said that if she knew when she was caring for her late husband what she knew now, she could have done a much better job. Another woman also came forward in tears and said first that she was living with the HIV virus and had been for several years. Her tears were not tears of sadness, though, but tears of joy because she had not realized that there could be so much support out there.
Malawi
In the six weeks before I returned to the U.S., three were dedicated to the Compassionate Churches Campaign trainings and two were spent in Malawi. In some ways it was heartbreaking and in others encouraging.
The heartbreaking part is that the economical and political situation was very hard. The cost of everything, including food staples, has gone up at least 100 percent from January 2011 to January 2012. This made life very difficult for Malawians, who are among the poorest people in Africa as it is. Add to this, there was virtually no fuel to be found in the gas stations. As I left Lilongwe, cars were lined up for about a mile or so waiting for the gas station to get either gas or diesel. There was an undercurrent of people being under great stress.
After I came to the U.S. the president of Malawi died of a heart attack—on Maundy Thursday—and his vice president, Joyce Banda, has been installed as the second woman president in Africa. She is much admired and has brought a sense of hope to the country. Please keep her and the people of Malawi in your prayers as these could be trying times for all.
The encouraging part of the visit was to see how well things were running in the AIDS programs of all three synods of the Church of Central Africa Presbyterian in Malawi. Just briefly, Livingstonia Synod's AIDS Programme has some interesting work going on with vulnerable children, including those living with the HIV virus and children who are at risk for infections (and a lot more) by being given away or sold into early marriages. (Think preteens.)
Nkhoma Synod is consolidating its AIDS work, rejuvenating a home-based care program that fell on hard times, and looking to start doing Community Health Evangelism collaboratively with other departments in the synod.
Blantyre Synod's Health and Development Commission has been doing great work in also consolidating the response to HIV and AIDS in the synod by making sure that all the pastors have a working knowledge of HIV and many other things.
Personal Note
Some of you have been interested in the life and times of my dog, Christopher Robin. That story came to an end in early September when he died. Learning to live without him has been more of a struggle than I had expected. He was 14 years old.
Since getting back to the U.S. I have been going through a battery of medical tests just to check things out and enjoying a bit of down time. However, I would love to visit you and share more about what’s happening in "my" region.
Blessings to everyone as we go into this stretch of "ordinary time" in the Christian calendar, a time for reflection and for working and growing our Christian walks.
Janet
Rev. Janet Guyer
Regional HIV and AIDS Consultant for Southern Africa
Cell phone in U.S. 626 841-1246
The 2012 Presbyterian Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 112
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