I’d like to thank all the young adults who came out to support the AIDS-Awareness coffee house on Friday.  This is such a huge issue that Blessed Hope—the entire church is getting on board with—we need everyone’s help.  This event was just the beginning.

If you aren’t familiar the AIDS crisis in Africa, you need to learn more.  It’s far more than a crisis, it’s the greatest emergency the world has ever seen.  6,600 people in Africa die every single day.  That is the equivalent of two 9/11 attacks every single day!  It’s the equivalent of a Tsunami disaster every single month.

Many Americans have a terrible attitude when it comes to this issue.  We have this—“well I guess they had it coming to them, that’s what they get for sleeping around” sort of mentality.  But there are cultural barriers that we don’t understand.

Can you look a woman in the eyes, who has been raped by an infect man from another tribe—can you look at her and say “that’s what you deserve”?  Or turn to her husband who she has now infected and say the same to him?  Can you look at a newborn baby who has been infected through her mother and say, “well, I guess you had it coming.”  But blame is not the issue.  Even in the case where a many or women has cheated on the other and infected their family with a virus that will claim all of their lives, has Christ not called us to reach out?

To respond to this issue, the young adults wrote a letter to our New York state senators and house representative asking them to continue to support the Santorum-Durbin amendment which raises the U.S.’s financial contribution to the Global Fund for AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria.  This isn’t about politics; this isn’t about charity, this is about justice, about following Christ’s commandment to love our neighbors.

“Forgive us our trespasses… for what we have left undone.”

Visit ONE.org and support the ONE campaign.