Gospel Prism

This past Sunday, we had George Snyman from Hands at Work, Africa share about the terrible consequences of AIDS in Africa. It is quite mind boggling really. Over 30,000 children a day die in Africa. His message to the Church was that we cannot remain silent on this issue or we will stand before God one day without a word to say when He asks us, “Where was the church?” There is so much to say about George. He is a man of faith, conviction, grace, and gentleness. His stories are absolutely amazing and you can just tell that these are no mere fabrications.

He recently attended the World AIDS Conference and he told me how disappointed he was in it. He said that the first world homosexual activists had hijacked the agenda to focus on the commercial impact of AIDS on homosexual rights. There were hundreds of seminars and tracks on AIDS with only about 3 on AIDS and children!!! Considering the staggering numbers of children dying from AIDS and being left as orphans because of AIDS, and to have so little focus on children is unnerving to say the least.

Outside the conference center, George said he ran into a homosexual activist with a shirt that had a sewing machine with an international no sign. George asked him what the point of his shirt was. He said that women who make clothing with these sewing machines were contributing to homosexuals not having commercial freedoms around the world. So George said to him, “Where I come from, there are grandmothers who use these sewing machines to give their many grandchildren who have lost parents because of AIDS, mere scraps of food to barely survive from hunger. Your shirt would be repulsive to the very people who are suffering the most from AIDS, women and children.” He didn’t have much to say or demonstrate.

You have to understand, George Snyman is a soft-spoken, deeply gracious, and strongly compassionate man. He is living the life of holiness because of the Gospel. He and his wife Carolyn, sold their nice 2 car garage, swimming pool home to essentially have no home so they could serve the poorest of the poor, AIDS orphans and widows in Africa. Their desire as an organization is to go where no one else will go and to go where there is the most devastation by AIDS. And they live that out in every way. They love the people. They have buried women and children. They have taken in AIDS babies into their homes.

So much to say here, I’ll be blogging about this all week. So get ready.

But one thing to note is that George loves the Gospel and the local church. And both fuel his passion to bring the Gospel to the most suffering.

You can listen the message he gave at our church here.