He looked sick, but then again I suppose that's exactly what AIDS does to you. However surrounded by his friends and the kids that are always around, I was struck by how very sick he looked, even before I knew what was wrong with him.
In Rwanda, like a lot of Africa, AIDS is a huge problem. I knew that coming into the country, but I didn't really realize the implications it had until I met Purity (weird name for a teenage boy, but whatever). We walked down the hill next to the church to a place where Pastor Moses said boys got together to smoke "the weed". When we got down there I realized we had pretty much walked into a gang. I half expected them to break into a song from West Side Story or something. We talked to them for a short while, and one of the older boys went into a speech that I couldn't understand, but all the other boys seemed to agree with him. It was then that I noticed an older boy hanging in the back, wrapped up with a scarf around his head, a baseball cap on and a coat, even though I was sweating in the heat.
The next day we went back to the same grove of trees to talk to those boys again. One of my
teammates shared the gospel with them and 5 guys came forward to accept Christ. Knowing that Pastor Moses had a long standing relationship with the boys, I feel like all the boys were ligit about their desire to follow Christ. Pretty cool.
One of the boys was Purity, still wrapped up in his blue scarf, still with his jacket on. Later Pastor told us that he had terrible rashes all over his body along with hands and feet that barely work. He walked up the hill with me after we were finished and he and I had what kind of a conversation we could have. We used his broken English and my broken french to introduce ourselves and I could just see the light in his eyes – a light that wasn't there the day before. I invited him to come to the church that night for our service.
He came!! We walked into the service, and purity was already there, dancing around and clapping along with the worship team. Let me tell you, worship here is a workout. And there he was, jumping right along with the best of them. Can you imagine, a teenage boy, a gang member, an AIDS victim, jumping for joy? Crazy to me, but I guess the joy of God's love exceeds all earthly limits.
