PROVO — The gospel of Jesus Christ offers hope for a brighter future despite the wide array of challenges people encounter, whatever their life circumstances.
Kathy Headlee, founder of a humanitarian organization called Mothers Without Borders, told participants at a BYU Education Week seminar on Wednesday that Africans who live in poverty and have contracted the HIV virus still manage to have hope through Jesus Christ.
A young girl named Carol was born into great poverty, and both her father and mother eventually left her to care for her four siblings.
"She left school and tried to make sure the family had food and a place to stay," Headlee said. "They lived in a small house, were often hungry, slept in the same bed, and had no proper clothes."
Carol found Jesus through interaction with an evangelical church and "became a ray of hope for everyone around her. She loved to sing, and on most days I found her with a big smile, singing. It's remarkable that someone who had experienced hunger, abuse and rape could be a little ray of light and hope for others."
When Headlee first met her, Carol had just been diagnosed as being HIV positive. She left her grandmother and siblings to enter an orphan care facility so her medical condition could be treated.
"Carol doesn't need to know the meaning of all things to have hope, to know that God loves her. I have met people where I've wanted to say, 'Don't you know that you shouldn't have hope? Your life is a disaster.' Yet Carol is an example of someone who has real hope in her life.
"She knows Jesus and has a testimony that he loves her. It's a remarkable thing that someone so small can understand so much about the Savior."
Another African woman named Sharon married a few years ago and was caring for the children of her husband as well as other children who were orphaned when AIDS killed their parents.
Though she also had AIDS, had lost most of her eyesight and lived in poverty, Sharon was baptized a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints within the past couple of years and wanted desperately to go to an LDS temple.
Not only did she have to wait a year after her baptism according to church rules, but there also was no money to make the journey, and she continued to become more gravely ill as time went by. "There came a point we didn't think she would live long enough to attend the temple. Yet that was her greatest desire."
Despite stereotypes Headlee has heard about how the poor — particularly in Africa — don't know anything different, she said it's a false notion.
"They see how other people live on TV. They're not used to it, and they're not 'happier that way.' Yet they find a way to be hopeful and happy in spite of it," which is what Sharon did.
In recent months, through the help of Headlee's organization, Sharon was able to go to the Johannesburg temple with her husband. Headlee shared excerpts from a letter of gratitude she wrote: "I prayed in faith asking God to sustain my life to be sealed (in the temple) to my husband and redeem my older sister" through LDS ordinances administered there. "I know that we're here to be tested so that we can learn from our own experience."
Sharon "lives and embodies hope" despite the overwhelmingly negative circumstances in her life, Headlee said, asking why many Latter-day Saints who have wealth beyond the wildest dreams of most Africans seem to lose hope.
Faith replaces fear, Headlee said, and all have the option to "choose hope, to choose love. God knows and loves you, and wants you to be happy and hopeful."
E-mail: carrie@desnews.com