ACET Nigeria, led by Paul Mershak, has developed a major new programme in this most heavily populated country in Africa, where 300,000 people die of AIDS related diseases every year.

Since its foundation in 2006, ACET has offered training to churc h leaders, support for church based volunteers offering education in schools and churches and a major programme of distribution of the book 'AIDS and You' and other training material in both English and Hausa, a local language spoken by 26% of the population.

Many churches are now engaging in work with HIV positive people and their families in local communities.  The widespread stigma and ignorance about the disease is also being broken down as a result of the training and education on offer.

If you wouild like to join the ACET Nigeria team in their daily prayer for their work and that of the wider ACET family, you can download their latest prayer diary here.

Stephen Shimode, a pastor trained by ACET Nigeria said:

My eyes have been opened to many aspects of AIDS (HIV) issues that I believe are vital to the church and Christian involvement.

Patrick Dixon, ACET's founder, reflects on a recent visit to a church leaders' training programme, deep in rural Nigeria:

Rural Nigeria is beautiful with dramatic landscapes of rocks, valleys, plains and rivers.  Much of the country can be very dry for months at a time, and millions of people walk huge distances every day to get water.

150 million people live in the country – ten times the population of Zimbabwe.  While you will find fast cosmopolitan life in big cities like Lagos, and sophisticated order in the government city of Abuja, most of the population lives in small towns and villages, often in very remote places.

Around 5% of the country’s adults have HIV – but this varies a lot.  In some small areas the numbers can be as high as a third.  The country is taking massive steps to control HIV spread and improve access to treatment.  In Plateau state for example, over 6,000 community workers have already encouraged a third of the 3 million adults to be tested, with the aim of reaching all the others within two more years.

We arrive along a dusty track in a small village which is the ancestral home of the ACET’s national director.    Houses made of traditional earth bricks with thatched or corrugated roofs are clustered together in tight family groups.  In the centre of the village are open spaces lined with community buildings such as church and school.   Christianity was brought to the village in the 1940s by American missionaries who used to live a mile away up on the hill.

Everywhere there is welcome shade from huge trees, with exotic birds flying overhead.

We are soon surrounded by fifty excited children from three to ten years old, all smartly dressed in blue school uniforms which have been lovingly made in the village itself.  Chickens squawk and cackle around our feet.   A bubbling stream runs along the side of the village from a mountain lake, and in the stream bed there are lush vegetables growing, carefully tended by young children.  Many of the older children are being educated further away, and most young adults have drifted away to the cities to find work.

We meet 12 church leaders in the church who have come from a wide area, and all been trained recently for a week by ACET.  Each tells us powerful and moving personal stories.  How they thought AIDS was “out there” in the community, but now they know from testing that AIDS is deep inside their own churches. The shock they felt to find for example that one in ten of their leadership teams were infected with HIV.  How they have been working hard to train members to go into church schools.  How they have been preaching for the first time about compassion, care, love, acceptance – and about healthy living.  How they are now trying to reach nearby villages and are mobilising other church leaders to do the same.

For many of these church leaders, the week long AIDS programmes have been traumatic and life-changing experiences.  Their lives and ministries will never be the same.  Many said they had had to repent before God of their hostile attitudes to those with HIV.  They had been ignorant of the realities of AIDS and had misinformed their people.  They felt convicted by the Holy Spirit and were now doing all they could to put things right.  They had been ashamed of how people with AIDS in their communities had been treated in the past.

At the end of the week of training, each church leader made three promises to take action over the next few weeks.  In most cases they had done far more than they committed to.  Not only preaching and teaching, but also creating AIDS teams and structures for care and prevention, training other people and so on.  One leader had reached over 16,000 people with prevention messages within weeks of the programme ending.  Others have set up support groups for people with HIV, orphan programmes and so on.  A huge result from a single week programme for 20 people.

Churches are the largest buildings in most villages apart from schools (which often also belong to the church). They are the natural assembly point and church leaders are hugely influential. Churches have structures and organisations for children, women and many other groups and can get messages across very quickly to entire villages, towns and cities.