The HIV/AIDS Cube

LAKE FOREST, CA (ANS) -- Two major Christian ministries have joined forces to launch the HIV/AIDS Cube, which is a clear, simple tool that presents the facts about HIV/AIDS and how to prevent the contraction and spread of the deadly virus.

Using the universal Language of pictures, the cube can be used to share the Truth and represent the love of Jesus Christ in a practical way that opens the door to knowing God personally.

The partnership between SIM and e3 Partners took center stage on the opening night of the third annual “Global Summit on AIDS and the Church,” November 28-30, organized by Rick and Kay Warren at Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, California.

Bob Blees, Vice President of SIM USA, and Dan Hitzhusen, Vice President of e3 Partners, shared the podium during the evening plenary session

Bob Blees, Vice President of SIM USA, and Dan Hitzhusen, Vice President of e3 Partners, shared the podium during the evening plenary session and told the more than 1,000 participants gathered how they had providentially met at the “Global Summit” a year earlier and forged an exciting partnership.

Rick Warren with Dan Hitzhusen

Blees shared from the platform, “This cube gives ordinary people the tool to share the facts about AIDS. Now imagine one million ordinary people being equipped to share about AIDS!”

Later, Blees and Hitzhusen agreed to talk about the HIV/AIDS Cube and how it came about following the previous summit at Saddleback Church.

Dan Hitzhusen began by saying, “After attending last year’s HIV/AIDS Summit, I began to see that God’s heart for people living with HIV/AIDS and the terrible destruction of the disease and said to myself, ‘We’ve got to do something.’ I was not involved, and our ministry was not involved at all in HIV and I came back with a passion to do something about it.

“At the conference, while having lunch, I met Bob Blees and, because e3 Partners is working a lot in Ethiopia, I asked him, ‘How come we’re not working and partnering together in Ethiopia?’ That conversation started an amazing journey.”

Bob Blees then said, “We were just surprised and amazed at how fast things went. We didn’t have any more meetings, but we kept in touch by computer and by phone and it just seemed like the thing just snowballed. We were working on collaborating on the design of the HIV/AIDS cube from the very beginning. We didn’t have any more contracts or have any financial arrangements; we just got on with the project.”

Dan Hitzhusen then said that following that initial meeting at Saddleback in November of 2006, he went to Sudan and later to Ethiopia to test out the HIV/AIDS Cube.

“Sure enough the Sudanese loved it and then we got it into Ethiopia the next month and the Vice President of Ethiopia loved it and wanted us to train three-hundred of his healthcare workers,” said Hitzhusen. “They loved it because everything that they’d learned up until this point had been so literate and most of the people they’re trying to reach are illiterate or oral learning people. So it was very difficult for them to take in the total volumes that they’d been taught in the notebooks on HIV/AIDS and turn around and communicate it to people on the streets. So they took the Cube, they learned it very quickly and they went out and shared it and testified to how wonderful that was.

“I then came back and we trained trainers, and I also went into villages in Rwanda and trained twenty villagers in there and they went out and exposed over five-thousand people in one day to this life saving message of HIV/AIDS in Rwanda; and not only did that occur, but we also saw many Rwandans come to faith in Christ as we talked about HIV/AIDS; how you can keep from getting it; how you get it; how to protect yourself and others and then how to care for people with HIV and AIDS.

“Through that, we were able to introduce the heart of God and the true life saving message of Jesus Christ and over five-thousand Rwandans professed faith in Christ that week while we were in Rwanda Then Bob took a group and they went into Burundi, Ethiopia, Rwanda and Uganda.”

Bob Blees then picked up the story: “Well the exciting thing about that was when the Africans that we were working with saw how it worked and they were first intrigued. Then they practiced using it themselves and got sort of excited. But once they went out and started teaching their own people it was incredible what they discovered. They came back so fired up and excited that just giving them enough supplies to meet their needs became a real challenge because they all wanted thousands because they had plans to go into their churches.

“The great thing about the HIV/AIDS cube is that no other medium so far has really been able to capture the imagination and it can dispel the myths and misunderstandings and the untruths about AIDS and really reduce the stigma so that people can be safe.

“People were saying that they were afraid they will get the virus if they shook hands with an HIV-positive person or if they have dinner or do business with them or do business with them. The cube reveals that none of this is true.”

If you would like more information, go to: www.Hivaidscube.org

Note: The redesigned HIV/AIDS Cube is currently in production and is expected to ship by February 1, 2008. Orders for the HIV/AIDS Cube can already be placed online via e3 Resources (www.e3resources.org) or by contacting SIM USA (literature@sim.org.

* I would like to thank Robin Frost for transcribing this interview.

Dan Wooding, 67, is an award winning British journalist now living in Southern California with his wife Norma of 44 years. He is the founder and international director of ASSIST (Aid to Special Saints in Strategic Times) and the ASSIST News Service (ANS). He was, for ten years, a commentator, on the UPI Radio Network in Washington, DC. Wooding is the author of some 42 books, the latest of which is his autobiography, "From Tabloid to Truth", which is published by Theatron Books. To order a copy, go to www.fromtabloidtotruth.com. danjuma1@aol.com.