There's Always Hope

Meet Margaret.  She is a 19 year old University student from Luweero, Uganda, and she is HIV+.  Maggie was born into AIDS and her family had no hope in her surviving.  You see, having a child with AIDS means another mouth to feed, but it's a mouth that won't last.  Most children like Maggie are abandoned by their parents at birth due to their limiting illness, but Margaret was different.  Since both parents were infected, they kept Maggie around along with her four other siblings.
          Maggie's father died "of a long illness" (AIDS) when she was 7.  Unaware of her condition until the age of 10, Maggie faced a challenging and sickly childhood.  Maggie realized that she was HIV+ when her mother was on her death bed.....as her mom lay dying, she instructed Maggie's older sister to "(don't) let her suffer and die in the way I did".  But Maggie's sister was only 21 and already had two children of her own to tend to.  Money was tight, and hospital visits and medications were far too expensive.  In the same year that her mother died, Maggie became exceedingly ill, losing an extreme amount of weight, but the financial demand to tend to Maggie was far too much.  Her sister knew she was going to die soon and decided to toss her off to someone else.
           Father Jerry has been a catholic priest in the Luweero area for the past 17 years, and took Maggie in as his own at the age of 11.  He took her to the clinics, paid for the needed medications, and got her back in school.  "Without him, I would have been dead 8 years ago, but he gave me hope" Maggie claimed.
            Being HIV+ is an embarrassment to Maggie, and she feels that life is very unfair in this manner considering that she inherited it from her parents.  She often found herself wondering why God would allow her to be infected while her four siblings are completely healthy, but she continued in saying "There's always hope".......I am overcoming AIDS and others can too.

Uganda is ranked 14th in the AIDS nation, this is due to lack of knowledge, resources, and people like Father Jerry.  There is hope for Maggie and there is hope for thousands of others suffering from the same cause.  When talking to Father Jerry, he explained why he did what he did.  He looked us in the eyes and told us that that little girl deserved a life, and now she has one...."to me that's all that matters".  He continued in saying that "AIDS victims just want someone to care-someone to look them in the eye and smile-that is what makes life worth it; what makes paying for the drugs and surviving worth it".

What are we doing in response to this?  How can we impact the fight with AIDS?  How can we offer hope?