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Latvian
Bible Society  |
| Three people chatting in a market square in Riga, Latvia. The Latvian Bible Society is seeking to make ordinary people like these more aware of the plight of HIV/AIDS patients. UBS/Maurice Harvey (LAT93T-37) |
LATVIA — None of the invited guests came to the great feast, according to the parable Jesus tells in Luke 14. They made their excuses about having no time and too much work. Today nothing has changed. The Good News about the healing of broken human lives may be welcomed by people who are sick or marginalised in some way, but many healthy and well-off members of society simply do not have time for such things.
This was the reason why the Latvian Bible Society decided to continue the campaign Help to live! into a second year (see World Report 386/17).
Reliance on God
HIV/AIDS patients show a genuine interest in the Bible and reliance on God is a daily necessity for them. We were surprised and delighted to find out how much the ones in rural areas, in particular, welcomed Scripture selections donated by the Latvian Bible Society to HIV/AIDS information centres in the first year of the Help to live! campaign. So we decided to run the campaign this year also.
Latvia’s official statistics show that on September 1, 2004, 257 people had AIDS, 2,961 were HIV-infected and 76 had died AIDS-related deaths. The government’s HIV/AIDS campaign sems to be effective in restricting its spread, but the number of AIDS patients is increasing every year and the situation remains serious.
Now that Latvia is a member of the European Union experts are expecting a new wave of HIV infections. In an increasingly multicultural society with a high degree of social mobility, people from Africa and Asia – regions where AIDS is a national problem and tragedy – will come to Latvia more and more. Disease knows no borders.
Help to live
Help to live! is a modest campaign. But 64 donors who participated in it donated an amount that has meant we can donate 600 Bible Selections and New Testaments to 13 HIV/AIDS information centres around Latvia.
One of our donors wrote to us as follows: “I am happy to help. I am planning to distribute Christian literature to our local HIV/AIDS information centre as well.” This was really the goal of our campaign: to invite people to look also for needs of other people.(WR 391/14 - 03.05) [1 photo]