I log in to Facebook about once every couple months and hardly ever confirm friends, but it seems to know me so well.

With gas prices at $5.85 a gallon over here it cost me a whopping $93.00 to fill up my truck the other day.

Road trip anyone?

There’s been a whole lot going on here at Thrive over the last month. We had a mission team from Virginia here with us, our village discipleship classes had graduation, over 280 students attended our Leadership Day event, and what would a small town be without the circus coming to town.

For the most part I wasn’t involved too much with those events because I’ve been immersed in designed the next curriculum for our AIDS prevention program, Leadership Summit.
This one focuses on, well, AIDS. We’ve written ones before that talk about AIDS in certain ways, but this one focuses entirely on the subject.

When we asked kids what they would like to learn more about, an overwhelming topic was that of AIDS. You would think that in a country where 1 in 4 people are HIV positive, kids would already know so much about the subject. Unfortunately, you’d be wrong. Kids don’t really know much at all on the subject. It’s not talked about and it’s definitely not taught in the schools.

The still “untitled” curriculum has a total of 10 chapters and each chapter is split into 3 sections: Truth, God, You. The truth section is all about giving these kids the facts about AIDS. I know it sounds simple, but we still encounter kids here in South Africa that don’t even believe AIDS is real. I know, crazy! The next section focuses on what God says. How He created them to live out their life using their gifts and talents and that He doesn’t want anything to get in the way of that! The “You” section is the application part. In a sense, “we’ve given you all the facts and tools now it’s up to you”.

So far I’ve got about 6 chapters completed and it’s starting to come together rather nicely. I’m always a bit nervous when I start on these projects because it seems crazy that I have about 6 weeks to come up with what is basically a magazine all by myself. Luckily, I’m not alone on this. Marc, an intern here, has been a lot of help with the design.

So what’s next for me when I finished this curriculum…. another curriculum!