There are a lot of things heading to South Africa for the World Cup this summer. For starters, I'll be going with my two boys and 21 other people. We'll be doing ministry in Johannesburg and Capetown and catching a few games while we're at it. I'll also be live blogging and uploading pictures and video for you to see. I have no idea what to expect because I've never been to anything quite like this. 

But this is what will shock you: THERE ARE ALSO 1 BILLION CONDOMS heading to South Africa. When I saw that number I couldn't believe it. Really?! Is humanity that sex crazed?! Everyone is planning on making big money from everyone's sexual appetite; taxi drivers, pimps, strip clubs, hotel concierge's, sauna's, message parlors. And all of this in an area that has one of the highest rates of HIV/AIDS in the world. 

The result? Aborted fetuses, orphaned babies, boys and girls sex trafficked and forced to serve 40-60 clients a day, violence, abuse, and a ton of HIV spread for these folks to take home with them and infect others. This is absolutely heartbreaking. The world is in desperate need of a Savior. 

CAPE TOWN, South AfricaSouth Africa and the World Cup: 1 Billion Condoms and 40,000 Workers. The taxi drivers hustling around the bars on Long Street in Cape Town say they are ready for all the soccer fans that will flood the city in June for the World Cup. So are hotels, restaurants, breweries and, inevitably, prostitutes.

Arguably, the soccer World Cup is to the sex industry what the holiday season is to candy shops. A temporary surge of excited people feeling collectively festive, willing to pay for a bit of extra indulgence.

South Africa's Drug Central Authority estimates 40,000 sex workers will trickle in for the event from as far as Russia, the Congo and Nigeria to cater to the wide taste spectrum of some 400,000, mostly male, visitors and their apres-soccer needs.

Henry Africa, 49, drives a taxi in Cape Town and, aside from the usual airport pickups and winery tours, he also operates the "Bright Red Tour," which he expects to be a hit among soccer fans. For the equivalent of 500 dollars, he'll shuttle customers from strip bar to strip bar all night and even bring them over to a safe-sex practicing prostitute, a relevant selling point in a country where one in five adults are estimated to be HIV positive.

Over the years as a cabbie, he says he has seen it all: men hoping to try sex with someone HIV-positive, men getting drugged, beat up and robbed because they thought they could find what they needed on their own. Read the rest of the article here, from the Huffington Post.

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