So this is how it starts...

Today was humbling – our group had the privilege of worshipping at a Holiness Pentecostal church near Butare, Rwanda and then visited a working group that has only been enrolled in our program for a few weeks. We were invited to their first group meeting. Ever.

It was the hardest day yet. These kids have no hope. They do not even believe that they have a future. All they have are their dreams drawn on pieces of paper. They do not have enough food to fill their bellies.

We saw the home of one girl in the working group on the way. Donata is a fifteen-year-old girl whose parents died of HIV/AIDS. They left her with a leaky hut that they cannot sleep in for fear that it will collapse on them (as the other hut on their property has done). They also left her with a ten-year-old sister and an eighty-year-old aunt who is mentally unstable.

Because they care for the aunt, both daughters have dropped out of school and even though they care for the aunt, they feel unsafe when she is around. Donata tries to find work by carrying water for others in return for a small – and I mean tiny – basket of sweet potatoes. The aunt laughed at their efforts saying that even the potatoes were a gift because their work wasn’t worth the food that they got in return. This weekend, they only had enough for two meals – lunch on both Saturday lunch on Sunday.

They eat just a few times a week. Their parents left them no land on which they can farm. Donata has no way to make money. At the working group, Epiphanie asked them to raise their hands if they could not raise the equivalent of 20 cents a week. Donata (along with 2/3 of her group) raised her hand.

I was so ashamed to walk back to the bus where I had a powerbar and a few granola bars. How could I walk away from such a girl and not give her everything that I have? How could I not empty my wallet and just give her everything? As a team, we wept. What else could you do?

Epiphanie cried and she explained to us that at the beginning of her empowerment program she began to give kids food to eat to get them through until their beans could be planted or their stores were producing money to buy food. She did precisely what her heart told her she had to do and those kids are still calling her and begging her for money.

The reason that I could walk away from those children today is that I have seen kids who were worse off than Donata two years ago who are thriving today. The orphans who have looked me in the eye and said “I was hopeless and now I have hope” because of the methodology would not change a thing about it. I was able to walk away with a renewed determination to tell Donata’s story because she is just at the beginning. Two years from now, when a team visits Donata, she will be smiling and happy. She will have food to eat and will have dignity – it is a gift greater than any food that I could offer today.

She starts off without hope. And one day soon, she will smile and give thanks to God. This is just how it starts.

Hear the words from another girl in our program named Donata:

“I was hopeless. When I met the Giving Hope staff in March, I felt love and began to smile. They asked me to tell my story and gave me hope. It changed my mind, and I started believing God was bringing me good things. I remember when Jean Pierre (a ZOE staff member) said, ‘You have to believe God loves you and will give you what you need if you trust him.’ The Giving Hope staff said that I would get a house, but I didn’t believe them because others had told me that before. Now we are grateful and happy to have this home. Before Giving Hope I thought nobody could love me, and that others were bad. Giving Hope opened my eyes – I could see people giving love. Now, I am committed to giving love, especially to orphans.”