I was on the Cookhouse team, a little town about 20 minutes outside of Somerset. This town has the highest 
HIV rate in the whole world. They say the reason for that is that there is a truck stop right there in town and the truckers stop and then sleep with the prostitutes who wait for them on the side of the road. Pretty much everyone who has had sex in this town has had sex with each other because it is so small and there is no where to go. As soon as we drove into this township, I could sense the evil there. The look of hopelessness was upon everyone’s face walking through the community. It broke my heart to see such brokenness in such a small town and that fact that the devil seemed to have a good grasp the people in it. Well we show up on the first day to show the movie and the hall we were showing it in was a short walk from the high school, but the students were supposed to be escorted by the teacher’s to the hall for their last period. It was about time to start the movie and we had no children in the hall, apparently the teachers told the students to go home first and drop off their bags then come back for the movie, well we all know how well high school students listen, so we ended up with maybe two-thirds of the 302 students we were supposed to have viewing the movie. But we knew that the students who needed to see this movie were present, so we started the two-hour movie. When we were about 20 minutes from the end (the most important part) our DVD froze and we could not get it to play. So the students started leaving and eventually we had to dismiss them without them being able to see the end of the movie. Everything that could have gone wrong went wrong on our first day. Our team had a rough night, but after digging into scripture and praying about it, we knew that God had a different plan than we had for Cookhouse, so we cheered up and decided to go with what God gave us for the net day.
Well to our surprise, the head mistress was now on board with our ministry there (when the day before she was rather reluctant). When we showed up, she had cleared the whole schedule for the afternoon and had three classrooms ready for us to set up sound systems and show the WHOLE movie to the entire school. What a blessing, we were so excited and praised God for this opportunity. Well we showed the movie to everyone and barely had 5 minutes to try and have some conversation with the students about the movie, trying to cover some of lesson one since we were so far behind. The next day our goal as to have the children write a letter to Francis, a lady in the movie who opened an orphanage in Johannesburg for street kids, about their troubles and hardships that they have to deal with on a daily basis. They wrote the letters and then dropped them in a box and we were able to read them later. It was tragic and oh so hard to read the letters. One girl’s parents were divorced and her dad left them and then her mother is never around so she feels like no one loves her or has ever loved her and she wanted to know what to do about it. Then another girl said that she had been raped by her teacher just like one of the girls in the Beat the Drum movie. In another letter, a girl said that her brother and her dad raped her, but she couldn’t tell anyone and she had no idea what to do. One boy wrote that if he found out he was HIV positive that he would to kill himself because he no longer have a reason to live. And the letters went on and on…these children are only in Grade 8, meaning they are 12 and 13 years old. It was so hard reading these letters feeling a burden of wanting to make it all better, but knowing that there is absolutely nothing you can do; only God can jump in and save them. Once we jumped over that hurdle we had many more in front of us, but we knew that it was God’s battle against the evil one and we were just there for Him to use.
“This is what the Lord says to you: ‘Do not be afraid or discouraged because of this vast army. For the battle is not yours, but God’s. You will not have to fight this battle. Take up you positions; stand firm and see the deliverance the Lord will give you, O Judah and Jerusalem. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged. Go out to face them tomorrow, and the Lord will be with you.’ ” – 2 Chronicles 20:15, 17
We finished the week and God has so much success by the end. The class I was teaching (grade 8), all 25 of them accepted Christ as their Lord and Savior and they all committed to abstaining from sex until they get married. Not only that, but of the 302 students in the school, 108 went to go get tested to see if they were positive or not. I know some of these students were horrified to find out their status, but at the same time they wanted to be courageous and make a stand in their community. I was so proud of my class and it was really wonderful to see how they changed from the first day we arrived to the day that we left. I left knowing that Satan no longer has a strong hold on this town, but that it is now in God’s hands and He has great plans for that little community. Please keep Cookhouse, along with the other schools, in your prayers. Even though we made an impact this week, the devil will still try to creep in and feed these people lies and get them to turn away from the decisions they made this past week.
I have another very important prayer request…the girl I taught with, Abongile, is from Somerset East and she 
is not saved yet. She is really looking for the Lord and trying to figure everything out, but she is also nervous that she may be infected with HIV. She had unprotected sex at least once and does not know the status of the guy who she had sex with. But she went to go get tested and since it was her first time they couldn’t tell right away, so she has to get tested again in a couple weeks and then she will be able to know if she has Aids or not. I could see in her eyes that she was very scared about the possibilities of having HIV, so please pray for her and pray that she is not infected with the virus. She was such a wonderful blessing and her testimony really motivated most of our kids to go get tested. I love her very much and I am praying that God continues to reveal himself in her life and that from there she will accept him in her heart and continue the work we started in Somerset East this past week.
This is the verse that got me through the week:
“The Lord himself goes before you and will be with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged.” – Deuteronomy 31:8
