15 Oct, 2009
Suspended between life and death
Exiled From School, H.I.V.-Infected Orphans Learn a Bitter Lesson
AN NHON TAY, Vietnam — The first day of school was a special one last month for the 15 children from the Mai Hoa orphanage here. They are infected with H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS, and for the first time they would be allowed to attend the local primary school. “The children were so excited,” said Sister Nguyen Thi Bao, who runs the orphanage and had been lobbying for three years to enroll them in the government school. “They had been wishing for this day to come.”
But when they arrived, they found an uprising by the parents of the other students, who refused to let their children enter the school together with the infected orphans. Some of the parents hastily backed away when the orphans walked past. After a short standoff, the principal, who had agreed to accept the orphans, told Sister Bao that their papers were not in order and that they could not stay.
The children returned to the orphanage, just a short walk down a country road, where they continue to study in small classrooms, still exiled from the uninfected world.“I was so happy to go to the school,” said a 12-year-old fourth grader, “but then I saw that some parents wouldn't let their children go to school with me because they are scared of my disease.”
Sister Bao and officials of the district and the school, the An Nhon Dong Elementary School, have met with the parents since then, but they remain adamant.
The Mai Hoa AIDS Center, with its green and quiet grounds, was founded by a Roman Catholic order in 2003 as a hospice for patients in the final stages of the disease. It added the orphanage to care for children of people who died there.The children are infected as well, Sister Bao said, but are receiving antiretroviral medication.
The buildings behind the classrooms are still a hospice, where a dozen emaciated patients lie on cots. Altogether, 250 people have died, Sister Bao said, including 90 whose unclaimed ashes are stored behind the hospice buildings. Some of those are the remains of the children’s parents.
So the orphans of Mai Hoa live suspended between the death that fills the space behind their classrooms and the life of a world, just down the road, that still will not accept them.
story & photo courtesy of - The New York Times
John 14:18-19 (ESV)
"I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. Yet a little while and the world will see me no more, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live."
In the gospel of John Jesus lovingly reminds us that he doesn't leave us as orphans, he accepts us and loves us just as we are. Right now there are 15 orphans in Vietnam that desperately need to be reminded of this truth. While their "earthly community" (their fellow Vietnamese) are rejecting them because of their disease, their "spiritual community" (the Catholic sisters) are extending the life and love of Jesus to them each and every day.
This story really is a microcosm of Jesus' earthly ministry. He constantly pursued the least and the lost, the members of his society that were discarded, unloved, and marginalized. In much the same way these radical Catholic sisters are embodying the life-giving, radical love of Jesus in their ministry to these Aids orphans.
I think our response is twofold. First, I think we should celebrate that the church is living out the gospel in such a beautiful way. For all of the ways that we stain and soil her with our sin, the bride of Christ really is beautiful. Second, we must commit today to finding the least and lost around us and loving them with the same sacrificial love that these Catholic sisters have modeled for us.
- Thank Jesus today for his lovely bride, the church.
- Who are the least and lost in your life. Find them. Love them.
- Ask a friend how they would respond if they were one of the rejected orphans.
- Invite a friend along with you as you serve the least and the lost.
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