| Death stayed at the gate when Janete (Juh-neh-chay) arrived at the House of Life. Her frail body, a faded shadow of what an 8-year-old girl should look like, was racked with illness.
It wasn't her fault she was an innocent victim. HIV had entered her body at conception, courtesy of her mother's blood, infected by her husband, a man who denied Janete was even his child.
As her mother grew increasingly weak with AIDS, Janete was cared for by her grandmother, who already cared for several of her grandchildren in a dingy shack.
"Janete couldn't even walk when she came in. She was so depleted by the virus," recalls Karen Gray, an International Mission Board missionary who founded the House of Life in Vitória, Brazil. "She wouldn't have lasted much longer with her grandmother."
That Gray was even able to start the ministry is a testimony to God's provision. With no medical background or training, Gray acted from a heart broken for the thousands of Brazilians suffering from HIV and AIDS. Educational programs about AIDS were inadequate, care was desultory, and the disease was spreading like wildfire.
According to estimates by the World Health Organization, nearly 615,000 Brazilians ages 15-49 were living with HIV/ AIDS at the end of 2001. An estimated 8,400 adults and children died of AIDS during 2001, and approximately 130,000 children are classified as "AIDS orphans" having lost a mother or father, or both, to the disease.
Trying to get medical assistance through the state-run hospitals was extremely difficult. Medicines, known as an "AIDS cocktail," were hard to come by because the supply in Brazil donated by an international health organization depended on statistics kept by local doctors.
Gray realized she would have to do the work herself. Beginning in 1995, she worked "literally out of the back of my car," she says. "Those were hard times." But statistics she gathered far surpassed work hospitals had done. She was given access to the medicines, as long as she could find a way to administer them.
Through support and partnerships throughout Vitória a coastal town just north of Rio de Janeiro Gray opened the House of Hope, a hospice for adults infected with AIDS. Not long afterward, it became apparent that a sister facility was needed for other victims children who have been infected by their parents.
The House of Life ringing with the sounds of children stands across the steep, cobbled street. People with HIV/AIDS can live at the House or receive assistance, counseling and food on an outpatient basis.
Nurses at the House of Hope help administer medicines free that the hospitals give directly to the ministry.
"At the House, people are not seen as drug addicts, prostitutes or homosexuals. They are treated as people who have AIDS," says Sergio Lopes, who served for several years as chaplain at the facilities.
Lopes, still based in Vitória, now serves the Baptist Convention for the Brazilian state of Espírito Santo. Both the House of Hope and the House of Life are run by the social service arm of the Brazilian Baptist Convention. Gray, whose husband serves as team leader for Rio de Janeiro, where they now live, admits the house will always be at the forefront of her heart.
"I'm not a nurse or a health-care worker," she says. "I have a degree in sweat and blood not medicine. I didn't really do anything special.
Lopes counters Gray's perspective. "A lot of people see the need," he says. "The difference is Karen cared enough to do something. People come here to the House to get assistance and medicine, but they come away with something eternal."
Not all of the medical staff at the House of Hope are believers yet, says Gray. But the number of nonbelievers is dwindling.
Gray says the House of Hope tries to educate people on basic facts about how AIDS is caught and spread.
"Promiscuity is the fastest reason for the spread of HIV and AIDS in Brazil," Gray says. "It is very common for men to be married and have multiple affairs with other women on the side.
"Many are finding out [they have AIDS] when they are already deathly ill," she says, adding that though several thousand have been served, the dead are too many to count. "My constant prayer is they would see Jesus in me and feel His touch."
Gray says during her time at the House, she "asked forgiveness so many times for my previously held judgmental spirit and condemnation against homosexuals and people with AIDS.
"Who am I to say I wouldn't have ended up like this if I didn't have Christ and life had dealt me the same hand?" she says.
Rogerio (Hoe-jeir-you) spends his days at the House of Hope in quiet contemplation. His gentle eyes look beyond the window into a world most could never even imagine. He moves almost in slow motion his thin, 6-foot frame weakened by the AIDS virus.
He spent about six years of his childhood alternately living with his mother and being homeless on the streets of Vitória. When his mother died, he was alone.
It is a life mirrored by countless children in Brazil's cities "using drugs and stealing," he says softly. "I smelled thinner and glue to get high." Rogerio, 28, still carries a slug in his back inches from his spine. He doesn't remember why he was shot. Most of his memory has been blurred, even erased, by the illness. What he does remember, however, is finding out he carried HIV.
He had hoped for a better life. When he was about 19, he moved in with a girl. She became pregnant and gave birth to a boy. The child died before his first birthday because the mother had AIDS and had infected their baby.
"One day after she had drunk enough, she killed herself," Rogerio says quietly. Rogerio became ill and was being cared for by a Baptist home for boys.
"When they saw I was getting sick, they sent me to a hospital, and I found out I was HIV [positive]," Rogerio says. He then went to live with a family who knew his mother. Lopes remembers when the House of Hope found Rogerio "living out back with the pigs and chickens."
By that time, Rogerio's body was decimated by full-blown AIDS. His tall frame weighed just 66 pounds. Since receiving treatment an AIDS cocktail of 12 pills a day at the House of Hope, his weight has peaked at 147 pounds.
"By the mercy of God, I've been here since then," Rogerio says. "If I hadn't found anyone, I'd be dead."
Still, he lives with the knowledge that death is inevitable.
"When I hit the streets, I was weak. The other kids would easily convince me to take drugs and do bad things," Rogerio says. "Now I sit with [the young children at the House of Life] and show them where I've been. I show them the picture of me at 30 kilos, then a picture of my baptism. I want them to see the difference God makes."
Rogerio has seen patients at the House "pretend to take the medicines, but throw them away in the toilet. If I had done that, I'd be dead by now," he says. "Those people gave up on life. I felt God had something He wanted to do with my life."
For the longest time after he came to the House of Hope, Rogerio says people shared about Jesus. He always said "someday." Realizing that he may never live to see "someday," he accepted the gift of salvation "and God changed my life."
Hearing such a simple but powerful confession brings a well of emotion to Gray.
"When I first met Rogerio, he wouldn't even talk," Gray recalls. "Now he's talking, and it's about God having a plan for his life. Those kinds of things are miraculous the healing of the soul."
Janete's mother lived at the House of Hope until her death. When Lopes told Janete her grandmother had also died of cancer, the young girl was devastated. "Now I have nobody," she had said. Even now, memory of her grandmother brings Janete to tears.
Lopes, who has been a father figure to Janete, pulls her to him and speaks to her softly. "Crying is OK," he gently whispers, "especially about someone we love."
Through the love and compassion of Christian workers, the House of Life helped change Janete's perspective.
"I didn't know why I had to be here at first," Janete says. "But I learned very fast that it was more than a hospital; that people wanted me to get better because they loved me."
"She knows this is her house," remarks Lopes. "It's hard for her seeing children come and go either with family or to death. But she has hope." Janete accepted Jesus and was baptized on June 29, 2002, the anniversary of the House of Life.
"I wouldn't have ever expected her to be here today after seeing the way she was when she came in," Gray says, stroking Janete's hair like a proud mother. "She is becoming such a beautiful, mature young lady. It's heartwarming to see her become a part of this house as much as anyone else and see her happy."
Living with full-blown AIDS, Janete takes a handful of pills and liquids each day to keep her T-cell count high so her body can fight off infection. Her voice is gentle, and her shyness is because she is hard of hearing infections and constant fluid buildup have wrecked her hearing.
Nearly 15 years old, Janete, aware of her condition, sometimes cries when she thinks of a life she may never have having a boyfriend, getting married and having her own children.
"I still have many health problems, but if I was not here it would be much more," Janete says. Lopes often reminds her that she has her grandmother's gentle personality, shown in the way Janete selflessly helps the younger children and comforts them.
"If God helps me, I'll be just like her," Janete says. "She left me such huge love that I can have and share with others."
"It's not wrong to dream," Gray says. "Because of her faith and salvation, Janete has accepted her mortality. But it's not wrong to dream."
The writer and photographer can be reached by e-mail at Commission@imb.org. |
