As Darryl Humphrey stares into a sea of faces, a lump comes to his throat. Seven hundred people die of aids daily in Kenya. How many in this crowd will die tomorrow?
Then Humphrey tells of how Christ helps him control his sexual urges and remain faithful to his wife.
In the background, Joshua Ng'elu nods in agreement. The public sector manager of Kenya's National AIDS Control Council thinks such testimonies may save thousands of lives.
"These people are black, just [as] we are," Ng'elu says of 65 African American Christians—all but four of them men— visiting Kenya in late January to promote prevention programs. "Normally, the people who speak of abstinence are white. But when you have someone coming in who is the same color and telling you the same thing, it makes you stop and think."
Shalom Outreach is a Dale City, Virginia-based short-term missions agency that works with the International Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention. It has been sending African American Christians to the continent since 1996.
Many Kenyan men have multiple sexual partners. They are the main source of spreading the deadly virus that causes AIDS, which is devastating many Kenyan families. More than 730,000 Kenyan children have lost at least one parent to AIDS. Fourteen percent of the population of 30 million is HIV-positive.
"We came here to show our African brothers that their brothers in the United States care for them," Humphrey says. "We want the Kenyan men to see that there is a way to survive this pandemic through Jesus Christ."
The team dispersed to six locations throughout the country. The group distributed thousands of bottles of Tylenol to local hospitals, visited secondary schools, and led open-air meetings. More than 3,500 people attended an open-air meeting in Kisumu, while in Nairobi 1,200 men participated in a special prayer session for their nation.
Julian Dangerfield, director of Shalom Outreach, thinks African American Christians are an often neglected resource for fighting the pandemic.
"The greatest thing we, as African Americans, can bring back to Africa is the gospel. There are African American churches in the United States that are 150 years old and have no missionaries," Dangerfield says. "It's time to wake the sleeping giant and start fulfilling the Great Commission. African Americans can be the Davids who slay the Goliath known as AIDS."
Books & Culture Corner: An Open Letter to the U. S. Black Religious, Intellectual, and Political Leadership Regarding AIDS and the Sexual Holocaust in Africa (Jan. 24, 2000)