A Testimony of Partnerships 
By Karen Seiter

I just wanted to share with you what God has been doing here with the HIV/AIDS Ministry since I attended the HIV/AIDS conference.

God sure tugged at my heart strings when I was at Saddleback. I left knowing I could no longer sit and do nothing. I too became emotionally disturbed. Our Christmas series was tilted "The Power of One." Every message was full of statistics, videos and a count down of how many children were dying from AIDS by the minute.

We now have an AIDS ministry and God has opened the flood gates. We now are in partnership with the AIDS Resource Center here in Dayton, Ohio.

Our ministry meets once a month. The ARC (AIDS Resource Center) has come and taught HIV/AIDS 101. We now open our Food Pantry the 4th Friday of each month and the clients of the ARC are welcome to come and select food of their choice. We also have partnered with case workers to provide for the various needs of their clients that are not being met by the community.

We provide emergency food supplies to the clients and also have assisted in moving and transporting clients to Doctors appointments.

This has given us an opportunity to build relationships with families in our community that are living with HIV/AIDS. Our lives have been transformed.

On our first food pantry day one of the clients called their case worker and said "they had hope for the first time" simply because someone said we will see you next month. This has all happened since December. Wow! God is good!

This weekend we plan to have a HIV/AIDS Awareness Weekend. The worship service will have a testimony by someone that is living with HIV and special music will be by one of our ministry servants who wrote a powerful song. The ARC Director will also be here to share.

God bless you!

Karen Seiter
Executive Director
Stillwater United Methodist Church
Dayton, Ohio