NAIROBI, Kenya — Rosemary opened up the five-gallon plastic bucket and pulled out gifts, including a set of new bed sheets. She clutched them to her chest. Her eyes filled with tears.
Rosemary wouldn’t even let her visitors help her put the sheets on her mattress. She wanted to clean her entire house before spreading such a precious gift across her bed.
The bucket and its contents were delivered to Rosemary by CARE for AIDS in Kenya. Organizations recognizing World AIDS Day on Dec. 1 focus on people — like Rosemary — who fight HIV and AIDS every day while trying to care for families.
In the past two years, nearly 6,000 hospice kits, as part of The Bucket Project, to African countries for distribution to sick and terminally ill people and their caregivers. The kits contain items that enhance patients’ comfort and improve their caretakers’ abilities to tend to them. These simple items include bed sheets, socks, petroleum jelly, vitamins and lip balm — all packed neatly into buckets.
Duncan Kimani, Kenyan director of CARE for AIDS, said clients have loved each part of the kit, right down to its packaging.
“The bucket itself has been received very well because they use the bucket [for] storage,” he said. “They store water or other food stuff, like grain … basically everything included in the buckets has been received very well.”
Churches and individuals from all over the United States donate their time and money to purchase and prepare these kits for shipment. Evangelical organizations join together with International Mission Board and CARE for AIDS to distribute the kits to people in Sub-Saharan Africa, where 24.7 million people lived with HIV in 2013, according to the World Health Organization.
On World AIDS Day, Christians are reminded to take a moment to pray for those around the world who live with a disease that warrants these buckets.
Click the link for the full story of the Karanjas family. http://careforaids.org/stories-of-the-embraced/karanjas/
— by Lily Jameson | BP