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Steamboat Springs — When Donald Messer talks about AIDS, he tries to put the effects of the disease in terms of names, not numbers.

"There are 33.2 million people infected in the world with HIV; every nine seconds, someone else is infected; 2.1 million new people were infected last year - yet we don't really seem too concerned about it because those are just statistics. They don't have faces, they don't have names," Messer said.

Messer, executive director of the Center for the Church and Global AIDS, will speak about AIDS awareness Saturday and Sunday at United Methodist Church in Steamboat Springs.

Messer worked for 29 years as a university and seminary president before taking up the cause of global AIDS education, prevention, care and treatment. He's been involved with the cause for about 20 years, he said. Messer was president at Dakota Wesleyan University when Matthias Krier, pastor at UMC, was a student there.

"When he was no longer president, he took on this task - mission, if you will - to awaken the Christian church on the global crisis of AIDS. There are so many people who are just totally unaware to what's going on in the world," Krier said.

Messer has written 15 books, including several about his experiences working with people affected by AIDS in his travels to nations such as South Africa, Kenya, Malawi, India and Singapore. Krier pointed to Messer's "Breaking the Conspiracy of Silence: Christian Churches and the Global AIDS Crisis" as an eye-opening account. Messer said the 2004 book was meant to motivate people of faith to "show more compassion rather than condemnation."

Krier brought Messer in for a presentation on AIDS awareness at his last church; the speech remained a topic of conversation among the congregation for months, he said. Messer will speak during UMC's regularly scheduled weekend worship services at 5:30 p.m. Saturday and 9:30 a.m. Sunday. Messer said he will lead a workshop and question-and-answer session from 11 a.m. to noon Sunday.

For more information about the Center for the Church and Global AIDS - a faith-based charitable organization that states its purpose as: "to address the challenges of the global HIV and AIDS pandemic and related health needs in the world through programs of awareness, education, prevention, care and treatment" on its Web site - go to www.churchandglobalaids.org.