Yesterday, here at Urbana, they fed 750 people every 9 minutes at some points during the 2 hour dinner time! Tonight, we experienced what hunger and relief ngo’s might serve starving people to prevent them from dying. A greenish, slightly lumpy porridge was served (with added nutrients) and 3 packets of sugar. A bottle of water was also given to each participant. The wait staff were even cheering us on! The money that was saved on that meal was then donated to HIV/AIDS prevention and relief organizations. Praise the Lord for that!

The session I attended today was about the International Justice Mission (IJM), which is a non-profit organization (ngo) that is bringing justice to victims of human sex trafficking in other countries. Unfortunately, this often included minors, mostly girls that were even as young as 5 years old. They talked about the investigators that go into the brothels undercover and then work with the local law enforcement to raid the places to bring the children, men and women to freedom. The girls are then taken to Aftercare facilities where they can begin the healing process to adjust back to normal life again. (www.ijm.org)

Lastly, after the evening session there was a focus on HIV/AIDS awareness. We had several speakers including Kay Warren (Rick’s wife), Princess Zulu and even a video from Bono to Urbana folks. They were just telling us that we were the ones to go and bring hope and healing to a lost world, both physically and spirtually. Also, in hopes to break down the social and cultural stigma that HIV brings to a person besides just the effects of the disease itself. Often times those found to be infected with HIV will be cast out of their villages, let go from work and completely ostricized from any people or association with their old life. We need to be the ones there in the midst of their utter darkness.

****All sessions can be found on the Urbana.org website - I’d encourage you to check the webcasts out at some point if you have the time!

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 30th, 2006 at 9:47 am and is filed under Contributed Articles, Stories, Urbana. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.