a work in progress . . .

Last week I was with a team from Perimeter church visiting people who are living with HIV/AIDS. One of the families we visited was a single mom with two children. She and her youngest child, a little boy about 6 years old, are both HIV+. We really enjoyed the time spent with this beautiful family, and especially to spend time with this rambunctious, energetic little boy. At one point he started to pretend he was taking our pictures with his imaginary camera so Claudia (one of the visitors from Perimeter) and I both let him take a turn actually taking pictures with our cameras. He loved it and we could hardly pry our cameras out of his hands when it was time to go! Towards the end of our visit we asked each family member what they wanted us to pray for. The daughter, about 12 years old, wanted to pray for a father to be in her life. This, of course, caused all of our hearts to break. The mother asked that we pray for provision for her children to be able to continue going to school. This is the most common thing HIV+ parents pray for, when they look to the future there are often many questions as to how their children will be provided for. Again, heart-breaking. Then the little boy wanted to ask God for food, specifically rice and meat. After spending some time in prayer for this family we had the privilege of presenting the family with a 10kg bag of rice, along with a few other food items. The little boy was allowed to open the bag to see what was in it. It was such a blessing to us to witness this little boy see God answer his prayer so quickly. He was so tickled! The rice and other food will last only a few days or weeks, but the faith and hope that they (and we) gained from this experience will last much longer. I hope that this will encourage all of us to continue to bring all requests, big and small, to the Lord and continue to trust in Him for all of our needs.