Juli McGowan

In the Summer of 2000, I went to Kenya for the first time and served with Empowering Lives International as a member of a short-term team from Azusa Pacific University. In going, I was unaware that this four-week mission trip would change my life. As a nurse, I helped deliver a baby on the floor of a mud hut. I also washed the open sores of a man dying of AIDS. I experienced brokenness and poverty.

I saw rich joy and inexpressible faith. I encountered people and a culture that captured my heart, and I knew I had found a place to serve. But first, I had more to learn. Upon completing my bachelor’s degree in nursing at Azusa Pacific University, I worked for three years in an infectious disease unit specializing in AIDS care. After two more summer trips to Kenya, I realized that to truly give quality care, I would need even more education. In September 2002, I went back to school at Cal State Los Angeles to get a master’s degree in nursing, with an emphasis in international healthcare, making me a Family Nurse Practitioner.

God had put a burden on my heart: that people should not have to die alone. In Africa, AIDS has ravaged through cities and villages, indiscriminately destroying people physically, emotionally and spiritually. The implications of this disease have affected not only individuals and families but also communities and the continent at large. Within Kenya alone, it is estimated that nearly 2.5 million people are living with HIV/AIDS. Over 600 people die of AIDS every day, most between the ages of 15 and 49. It has been said that the ultimate tragedy is depersonalization—dying in an alien and sterile environment, separated from the spiritual nourishment that comes from being able to reach out to a loving hand, separated from a desire to experience the things that make life worth living, separated from hope. AIDS has done this to too many in Kenya—it has stripped them of their dignity and left them to die by themselves. God continues to place this burden on my heart: not to let people die alone.

In September of 2004, I returned to the village of Kipkaren, Kenya as a member of the ELI team. Since that time, dreams of caring for those infected and affected by HIV/AIDS have been realized far beyond what I had even imagined. A partnership that has developed with a neighboring clinic has brought access to much-needed HIV testing, food support, and quality treatment—including HIV medications. Daily, the ELI Home-Based Care (HBC) team humbly give their lives to serve the sick, the widows and the orphans within our village.

In an amazing way, our community has captured the vision and is combating the fear that plagues HIV/AIDS by speaking truth and extending compassion in practical ways to their neighbors and family members. Trainings have been given to empower people from other communities to also invest their lives in similar efforts.

For obvious reasons, HIV/AIDS is overwhelmingly challenging. It has stolen so much life, but I thank God I am witnessing a sense of hope being restored. In the midst of so much darkness, there are glimmers of light. I have witnessed the healing that is received when people are free to come as they are, in their brokenness, and find a place of refuge. There is much work to be done as well as love to be given.

I believe that the ELI HBC program has only touched the surface of what God is desiring to do within our village and throughout Africa. I envision massive mobilization of churches and individuals from surrounding communities to be involved in trainings on how to implement home-based care for those already infected with HIV/AIDS. Silence must be broken with words of truth. AIDS awareness campaigns are needed to encourage and provide opportunity for early HIV testing and treatment as well as to promote behavioral changes that prevent further spread of the virus.

It is God’s loving-kindness that compelled me to come to Kenya and allows me to hear the cries of the poor and the brokenhearted. By His grace, He enables me to live out His love in action and in truth. Jesus said: “Whatever you do unto the least of these, you have done it unto me,” (Matthew 25:40). I cannot begin to tell you the number of times I have sat with Jesus. He is right where He said He would be.

julimcgowan@empoweringlives.org