Volunteers help give life to AIDS exhibit
Steve Buck didn't have much of a choice about spending his Saturday at First Presbyterian Church of Glen Ellyn.
"My wife made me," the Glen Ellyn man jokingly said outside the entrance to an interactive exhibit that aims to teach people about the AIDS pandemic in Africa. "She volunteered to be the volunteer coordinator, and I was the first one she picked."
The interactive traveling exhibit, sponsored by the Christian relief agency World Vision, aims to bring home what life is like for an African child living in the midst of the AIDS pandemic.
It takes participants on a journey through the lives of one of four children who have been helped by the agency.
Through the aid of an audio player, visitors walk through a replica of an African village as a taped narrator walks them through the world of the children.
"We're trying to take something so far away and make it mean something to our parishioners," said Jocelyn Smolik, who works as the assistant manager for youth ministry at the church.
Church volunteers helped build a wall in the parking lot that will be used to spray-paint prayers and messages of hope, she said.
Several volunteers, including Buck, had personal reasons for getting involved with the volunteer efforts for the exhibit.
Buck's daughter spent three weeks working in an AIDS orphanage in Zambia.
"I don't think people realize it affects so many children," he said.
Barb Retelny, another parishioner, has gone on two church-sponsored mission trips to Uganda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo to help provide relief.
"The people we worked with have such strong faith," Retelny said. "Just getting through the day sometimes is a struggle for them."
A prayer vigil is also planned for Sept. 12 at Lake Ellyn. It will include African dance performances by the Muntu Dance Theater of Chicago and guest speakers with firsthand experience with the AIDS epidemic.
The exhibit runs Sunday from 12 p.m. to 10 p.m. and reopens again on Thursday. It will then run through the end of the week. For more information on the exhibit, call the church at (630) 469-2007.