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Visit to orphan's house inspires an AIDS ministry in Zimbabwe

Dec. 1, 2005	 News media contact:   * ( ) * {669}

NOTE: A UMTV report and photographs are available at
http://umns.umc.org.

By Bob Vernon*

CLAYTON, N.C. (UMNS) - It was a teenage girl from his congregation who
planted the seeds of a Zimbabwe mission to help AIDS orphans in the
heart of the Rev. Greg Jenks.

The former pastor of Christ Community United Methodist Church in Clayton
found his passion following a trip that he and other United Methodists
from North Carolina made to Zimbabwe in 2003. On that trip to carry food
to mission schools and churches, Jenks met an orphaned 15-year-old girl
who was caring for her three young brothers.

"The doors had always been closed, but this time, God not only opened
the doors, he ripped them off the hinges!" Jenks says, describing how
the seeds to help AIDS orphans grew into a ministry.

"She took us into her home and said, 'This is all we have left - all the
food we have left.  It is enough to last until Saturday, and then after
that, we'll just die,'" he says.

If there was ever any doubt in his mind about whether this was where God
wanted him, he says, this incident made clear that this was to be his
life's work. He saw a personal face to the AIDS pandemic in Africa, and
the Zimbabwe Orphans Endeavor, or ZOE, was born.

The World Health Organization predicts there will be 41 million children
orphaned by AIDS worldwide by the year 2010. Ninety percent of the
orphans will be in Africa.  Other estimates put the African number as
high as 40 million orphans, a number equal to the entire population of
schoolchildren in the United States.

For Jenks, the tragedy goes beyond numbers. "We talk about AIDS so often
in the terms of statistics, but when you travel and spend time in the
midst of it, it's not percentages anymore. It's faces. Children's
faces."

On his most recent trip to Zimbabwe, last fall, he saw that the girl had
painted flowers on the side of her little home. She had also written on
the wall, in the Bantu language of Shona, words that translated into
this message from James 2:26: "Faith without works is dead."

Jenks says this young girl understands that Christians in America put
their faith into action, and that changed her life half a world away.

A widow, in one of the communities ZOE serves, has five children of her
own. She took in five more children when both of their parents died. The
widow's outreach, with ZOE's help, has grown to feeding 100 children
every day at her home.

That widow has become a hero for Susan Graebe, of Soapstone United
Methodist Church in Raleigh, N.C. Graebe was a volunteer last year on
one of Jenks' eight two-week mission trips to Zimbabwe, and she says the
trip changed her life.

When she returned home, she felt thankful for the blessings she and her
family have received, but she also felt concern about the waste she sees
around her in the United States.  "The amount of money that we spend on
food that we don't need, clothes that we don't need or little trinkets
that we don't need - you can take that money and it could literally save
somebody's life."

She says she was able to see firsthand that Jenks is the perfect person
to lead ZOE.  He has a gift of being able to partner with people, she
says. "He doesn't go in and say, 'Oh, here's your problem. I'm here to
solve it.' He embraces people and talks to them. He finds out who they
are, and then he looks at the resources he has to partner in the
situation. That, to me, is what ministry should be about."

Jenks is no longer pastor of Christ Community United Methodist Church.
He travels the state and nation, sharing the ZOE story with
congregations and asking for their support.

Most of the support comes in the form of families pledging a monthly
check to ZOE.  The response has enabled Jenks to surpass his goal of
feeding 4,000 orphans in 2005.	The number of children fed by ZOE this
year has already reached 8,000, and the ministry is providing clothes
for 1,500 AIDS orphans in Zimbabwe.

In some churches, the support isn't only monetary. University United
Methodist Church, of Fort Worth, Texas, sent a medical team with Jenks
on a trip to Zimbabwe last April.  The team of two doctors and four
nurses from the congregation worked alongside overworked Zimbabwean
medical professionals at United Methodist Church missions hospitals in
Mount Makomwe and Mutambara.

Besides providing healing ministries, the Texas group taught "Deep in
the Heart of Texas" to the Bantu orphans at Mount Makomwe Primary
School.

Jenks and another group of volunteers returned to Africa in November for
a ninth mission trip to find other schools and missions that ZOE can
partner with.

More information about the Zimbabwe Orphans Endeavor is available at
www.zoeministry.org or by calling (800) 951-0234.

*Vernon is a freelance producer in Cary, N.C.

News media contact: Fran Coode Walsh, Nashville, Tenn., (615) 742-5458
or newsdesk@umcom.org.

********************

United Methodist News Service
Photos and stories also available at:
http://umns.umc.org

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