In just two days we transitioned from using latrines and cooking tortillas over a fire in the Nicaraguan campo to watching cable television and traveling by subway in one of the world’s most populated cities.  We shifted from walking among rows of bean plants and banana trees to walking the halls of a crowded conference center.  El choque de culturas–the crash of cultures.

While many of us felt very comfortable in the campo, even with language barriers and makeshift table-beds, many of us felt very uncomfortable at the International AIDS Conference in Mexico City.  Many of us felt inferior to the scientists, doctors, and world leaders, like UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, Mexican President Felipe Calderón, and President Clinton, that we heard speak.  And many of us felt completely disconnected from the HIV positive transgender sex workers, IV drug users, and gay men we sat with in sessions.  But regardless of our comfort levels, we were all asking, “What does God want me to take from the opportunity to be at this internationally renowned conference?”

God let us be frustrated, angry, sad, and uncomfortable in Mexico City.  God also opened our minds and hearts to learn about the virus that is still growing, still killing, and still has no cure.  The other seven MDG’s are essential to reversing the HIV pandemic, but there is no MDG specifically addressing stigma and discrimination, which are two key factors in the global spread of HIV.  However Jesus addressed stigma and discrimination over and over, and that is something that we as a group of twelve Baptist young people could speak about with conviction.

What did God want me to take from the XVII International AIDS Conference?  I still don’t have the capacity to do groundbreaking research on antiretroviral drugs.  And I’m still not sure what I think about programs to supply clean needles to drug users in Bangkok.  However I knew before the conference that I was very capable of loving and advocating for the faces of HIV I knew–the orphans I held in Ethiopia and the widows I danced with in Uganda.  But sometime during the conference I remembered that God calls us to do more than love only those who are easy to love.  The HIV positive transgender woman in the bathroom or the drug-using teenager who used a contaminated needle may not tug at my heart as much as orphans and widows from far away countries, but now I’ve seen that HIV doesn’t discriminate; I know that Jesus doesn’t discriminate, and it’s time for my heart and advocacy efforts not to discriminate either.  As John Derrick said during our group time the other night, “If we don’t love them, who will?