NEW YORK (ABP) — “Peace be with you,” says Frank Tomaselli as he ends a conversation. But these words are more than a greeting to Tomaselli. They're a way of life.
Growing up in a household where his parents used insulting names instead of encouraging words, Tomaselli eventually began using drugs. As a result, he contracted HIV/AIDS.
Filled with fear about his past, Tomaselli recalled wondering, “How can God forgive me for all the things I've done to support my habit for years?” Tomaselli found words of hope from a local priest who told him, “If God can forgive the six billion people in the world, he can forgive you.”
Four years ago, at a Bible study for an AIDS service organization, Tomaselli met Ronnie Adams, program director of New York City's Rauschenbusch Metro Ministries. Adams, who serves as a Bible teacher and volunteer chaplain for three HIV/AIDS service agencies, recalled the change in Tomaselli.
“He accepted that forgiveness and is a strong leader. He is a more effective missionary to the AIDS community than I am,” said Adams, a missionary of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship.
Tomaselli wants to share the peace he found with others who have HIV/AIDS. “I really love speaking about God to people, especially the lost,” said Tomaselli, who sees himself in the people he encounters. “My past is dead. When I see it, I know where I was.”
Tomaselli said his efforts are worthwhile “if I can preach to people with my own disease and they say, 'Wow, if he can do it, I want to be saved.'”
A native New Yorker who describes himself as reading at a second-grade level, Tomaselli learned the Bible by repeatedly listening to audiotapes for a year. Saying he felt like Moses — a man with a message but without the right words — Tomaselli prayed for guidance as he learned the Scriptures and studied devotional guides.
Without money to attend Bible school, Tomaselli enrolled in a correspondence Bible study course. Now, he teaches at Bible studies, filling in when Ronnie Adams is out of town.
In his role as a volunteer chaplain, Adams visits the three HIV/AIDS agencies and offers spiritual help to some of the city's 100,000 people with HIV/AIDS. After working for the Rauschenbusch Metro Ministries for nine years, he said, he has found the HIV/AIDS community is the most open to the gospel and to his ministry of all the work he does.
“It's a remarkable experience seeing folks living with a life-threatening disease and how they continue on with their life and grow in their Christian experience and Christian life and live a life worthy and full in the midst of living with AIDS,” he said.
Adams and other members of the Fellowship's HIV/AIDS Task Group envision having a network of churches that are ministering to people with HIV/AIDS, matching those congregations with CBF Global Missions field personnel like himself. The network would provide a source of communication, information and support for churches.
“It's such a huge issue, we need more than just [missions] personnel working on it,” Adams said. “We want to involve all persons in the CBF family who are already ministering.”