South Africa

This country is located at the southern tip of the African continent and is a middle-income, emerging market with a plentiful supply of natural resources. Unfortunately, South Africa’s unemployment rate is quite high. There are discouraging economic troubles that linger from the apartheid era, most notably poverty and a lack of economic empowerment among underprivileged groups.

Another daunting situation is the heightened incidence of HIV/AIDS infections. South Africa is ranked number one on The World Factbook country listing of people living with HIV/AIDS. In 2003 a staggering estimated 5.3 million people were living with HIV/AIDS.

Project Gateway, a ministry in Pietermaritzberg, South Africa, aims to equip and empower local people, giving training in job and life skills, plus care for the most vulnerable. Some of its projects include a hospice for babies with HIV/AIDS, a pregnancy crisis center and a women’s shelter.

Please pray for “A” a hospitalized eight-year-old boy who is HIV-infected and cannot be put on anti-retro-viral drugs because he is already on medication for tuberculosis.

Pray that the pain in his chest and the sores in his mouth will ease and he will be released from this suffering.

Please pray for God’s miraculous healing of this young boy whose parents died when he was four years old.

Pray that he will be able to have visits from his caretakers, an aunt and great-grandmother, and that they will be able to find the funds to see him in the hospital.

Submitted by Viva Network.

Update:
Give Thanks to God for the Ithuteng Trust school in Soweto and its teachers for providing a safe place for traumatized and violent teenagers where they can learn to overcome the horrors they've experienced in their young lives.