Aid for AIDS: Sale raises funds for local missionary
When Ben VanDeman was 10 years old, he stood in the back of a church and told God there were two things he would never do with his life. VanDeman, the son of a pastor mother and pastor father, stood and told the Lord he would never go on a mission trip and he would never go to the Amazon.
Thirteen years later, VanDeman’s resolve had done a 180-degree turn. By the age of 23, he said, “I was in the Amazon, teaching the gospel.” Now, at the age of 31, VanDeman is getting ready to make his seventh trip in seven years to Africa to work with people affected by AIDS.
It will be a 17-hour flight from the United States to Johannesburg, South Africa, then a connecting flight to Durban, then a six-hour van trip to the Zulu Natal area on the South Africa/Mozambique border. Despite the violence in the area — “South Africa is a really violent nation,” he said — this is where he feels called to be. “God has put it on my heart to focus on Africa for this season.”
It’s all in a season’s work for VanDeman, who, along with his eight brothers, grew up on the south side. He’s a 1996 graduate of Whiteland High School. And this is how he describes his job: “full-fledged evangelist/missionary running around the globe, focusing on young people around the world.”
This trip, this season, will find him working with three ministries, spending time doing door-to-door evangelization, working with a group who feeds 4,000 to 5,000 people a day, and then concentrating on a training center that teaches job skills to local residents.
“This area is the epicenter of AIDS in South Africa, where one in three adults in the area has AIDS,” VanDeman said. Though recent reports suggest that the number of people affected by the AIDS epidemic in Africa is stabilizing or falling, VanDeman isn’t so sure. “All those numbers are guesses. People can’t come out and say they have it, or they’ll be kicked out of their family.”
And that’s where VanDeman’s personal ministry kicks in. He said: “This is where the whole mercy side of missions comes in — to be friends to people without friends and to be family to kids without family. It meets the greatest need of people — to be loved, accepted and cared for.”
