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In the middle of our meeting, Jackie, a Kenyan woman who had recently lost her husband to aids, asked us directly, "Have any of you lost a loved one to AIDS?" "Do any of you know anyone with AIDS?" We feebly answered, "No."

"How do you expect to be relevant here?" she asked.

We were in Nairobi, where a group from my church was meeting for the first time the Kenyans with whom we would join in responding to Nairobi's AIDS epidemic. Jackie had inadvertently touched on both our deepest fear and our primary reason for coming to Kenya. We feared there was no way to express how we cared for Kenyans awash in the flood of AIDS.

Yet we earnestly desired to give voice to God's hope. We were to learn that despite our inexperience and insecurity, we could show God's love to suffering people and make a difference in their lives.

Shortly before AIDS was first identified, I lived for two years in the Congo, bringing malnourished children back to health. I saw how infectious diseases precipitated malnutrition and even killed already weakened children. I began to know when a starving child was rounding the corner back to health, when the look in his or her eyes became sharper.

I remember one child we nourished to this point, only to watch him lose his slim grip on life after acquiring an infectious diarrhea. He died suddenly from dehydration.

When I returned to the U.S., I earned a graduate degree in epidemiology to learn how to prevent or slow the spread of infectious diseases. I had intended to return to Africa, but marriage, children, and other events led to an academic career and roots in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

When a friend gave me an issue of Time magazine featuring a cover story on AIDS, I felt an undertow pulling me back to Africa. How could I use my knowledge of epidemiology and Africa to benefit the continent most affected by AIDS? How could I not? But with the needs of our family, my wife and I felt we needed to stay in Chapel Hill. How could we be involved there, but live here?

The answer was through my church. The Chapel Hill Bible Church is a nondenominational, evangelical church with about 1,500 attendees on a Sunday morning. The young adults pastor, Tim Conder, has made missions the driving force in the young adults ministry. Tim was not only receptive to working with AIDS victims in Africa, but excited.

For many years, our church had worked with a church in Nairobi. We approached the pastors of Nairobi Chapel with the idea of forming a joint young adults team to respond to AIDS together. Although their passion was principally for church planting, they agreed to walk with us through this experiment with AIDS ministry. Tim and I were determined that Chapel Hill Bible Church would listen to and learn from the Kenyans. We would not come with answers and plans. We would learn how to convey God's love on their terms. After forming a team of young adults, we began meeting regularly, despite our uncertainty regarding what we would actually do in Africa.

A few months before our departure for Kenya, we learned about Jane Wathome, who attended Nairobi Chapel and who was beginning a ministry among women infected with or affected by HIV/AIDS. She was already working in Kware, a slum just outside of Nairobi, where poverty is lethal. It is virtually impossible to feed, clothe, and shelter a family, much less buy medicine, on the meager income most of these women earn. As a result, many residents of Kware face death. The money that comes from sexual favors is an enormous and ever-present temptation.

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November 2006, Vol. 50, No. 11