IS SMALL HEAD PEEKED FROM AROUND the doorframe; his charcoal eyes gazed steadily into the semilit room. In the crowd of people, anxious to receive medicines, talk to the doctor, and explain their plight, the boy seemed small and insignificant. I watched him as he slowly maneuvered himself into the 3' x 7' room in which we had established our makeshift pharmacy earlier that morning, and I smiled as he slowly crept closer to me. Soon he was standing next to me. I could see his tiny hands as he wriggled nervously, not knowing if he should stay or go, all the while mustering up the courage to talk to me. To his surprise, I squatted down to his level, and we looked each other in the eye. I stuck out my hand and promptly offered a greeting. He smiled, and instantly I knew I’d won his heart.

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"I Was Hungry and You Fed Me..." Try Both Working for Social Justice

Paco was 5. He had been living in the macroshelter with his family for about three months. Previous to that he had been living happily in a small house with his three brothers and his parents at the edge of the Choluteca River. However, on the fateful night of October 28, 1998, when Hurricane Mitch raged against Honduras, they fled their home for higher ground and watched in horror as their life possessions washed away. Although his situation was grim, Paco smiled happily and chatted to me about his day, his friends, his teacher, and other things of great importance to children. For a moment I was transported to a time I had forgotten, a moment when life had another significance. A time when holding my father’s hand was all the reassurance I needed, a time when forgiveness came easily, no one knew the meaning of a grudge, and sharing was part of everyday life.

As the nostalgia washed away, it was replaced by questions. I wondered what had happened to me. I had once been like Paco, full of hope, excited about tomorrow but living today. Yet after all these years why hadn’t I continued to trust so completely as I had done as a child? Why was it that now I sometimes felt resentment, and forgiveness was not the easiest gift to give? And what about sharing? Did cleaning out my closet each spring count? Did the donations to Community Services come from my heart because I knew of people in need, or was it because I needed that extra room for new clothes, new shoes, or the like?

Most important, though, I wondered if Paco’s innocence—like my own—would be replaced with a jaded perspective of a world seeking only to serve itself and providing assistance to others only out of guilt. I wondered how hope could live when there was so much pain, so much despair. At that moment I decided I needed to find hope again. I needed to feel that trust and comfort that Paco felt, sitting next to me on the sidewalk, holding my hand. I wanted that, what he had—his childhood innocence, the idealistic dream that in the end everything would turn out all right.

Before Paco, I had spent my days generating reports, translating documents, and performing routine office duties. Although I had been with ADRA for six months prior to my assignment in Honduras, I really did not know the faces of the individuals I served.

I spent six months in Honduras, but I was not able to answer any of my questions. As my plane took off from Tegucigalpa, I took with me images of Paco and questions without answers. I decided that the answers would come; I just did not know when.

Hope Discovered
Our plane landed in Conakry on a hot October afternoon in 1999. My body ached from the six-hour flight from Paris. I was jet-lagged, excited, and nervous all at the same time.  Soon I recognized the reassuring ADRA logo—even a million miles from home I felt safe.

During the three weeks I spent in Guinea, I battled with my inability to speak French, and my mouth gaped at children and livestock bathing in the same rivers, at women carrying heavy loads on their heads and their children on their backs. Africa proved to shed some light on the questions I had discovered in Honduras. The smile of a woman who knew that I had come to help, the touch of a child’s hand as she noticed the difference between her skin color and my own, and the warm welcome of villagers as the white ADRA vehicle stopped in their village melted my often pessimistic view.

Hope was alive and well and living in the most remote corners of Guinea. The project in Guinea—a four-year child survival program that will help women take better care of themselves and their children—was funded. I felt hope’s smile widen as I departed.

The holidays came and went, same as they had each year—except something had changed, and without consciously acknowledging it, I was the one changing.

In January I returned to Honduras. Paco had left the macroshelter. His family had received a new home, and they were starting a new life. On this trip, however, there were new places to visit and new families to meet. In Choluteca, a city in the southern region of the country, ADRA built a brand-new housing development for families like Paco’s. The people moved into their new homes that they themselves had helped to build. Now there were plans to build a community center and to provide loans for women so they could generate income for their families. Hope waved as the ADRA vehicle drove away.

Hope Lives
Midwinter is not nearly as severe in Washington, D.C., as it is in Azerbaijan. The bitter cold of Nakhichevan—the region of Azerbaijan suffering a blockade because of the war with Armenia—burned my face, and I squinted as I looked over the brown landscape. There was nothing, just mountains as far as the eye could see and the sound of the wind blowing. The schoolrooms were cold, the hospital windows broken. Little children with wind-scorched faces chased the ADRA car as it bumped along the dirt roads. ADRA had assisted a local community in building a birthing center for women of the village as well as women in villages within a 25-mile (40-kilometer) radius. The cost was $4 per birth. This would be opening day, and the whole village was present. The minister of health arrived, and the television cameras were ready. The ribbon was cut, and instantly the sun broke through the clouds. Hope had arrived just in time.

Armenia, the land of Noah, was blurry at 7:00 a.m. after a 10-hour flight from London. After a few hours of sleep I thought the capital city, Yerevan, looked magnificent. But underneath its splendor the city ached. With 70 percent of the population unemployed, many—women, children, and the elderly—went to bed hungry each night. An inability to pay for heat and water made the hunger even more unbearable, but in a tiny restaurant in the heart of the city, hope was making soup and bread—a hot meal. (Since 1995 ADRA has been feeding more than 70 people a day from the basement of a tiny restaurant in Yerevan.) I sat with the staff, peeling potatoes, learning Armenian, and sipping tea. Sevta, the cook, asked about my family, told me about her boys, and asked if ADRA would always do this work, the work of hope. With a jolt I realized that I finally had some of the answers for which I had searched for so long.

Just this past July I returned from a one-month trip in Ecuador. Hope joined me. We spent a lovely Sabbath afternoon in a tiny church in the mountain community of Guantubamba. Hope sat on the first row as the young people sang a beautiful hymn. I heard her laugh as the children and I joked. She listened intently as the local people told us of their plans to build a water system and how far they had gotten and of their appreciation to us for our help and support.

  As Christians, we sing and preach that “we have this hope”—but how long has it been since you have felt that? Since you have felt that presence like the reassuring hand of your mother when as a child you were sick? How long has it been since you trusted completely and you knew each storm in your life would be calm? How long has it been since you experienced the comfort of hope?

Hope lives in the cold winter of Azerbaijan, in the mountains of Ecuador—she lives next door to you and me. She lives there among the people; she knows each one by name. Farmers feel her presence each time they irrigate their crops. Schoolchildren know she is near as they sit in their new schools. A mother thanks hope quietly as her baby grows into a healthy boy. I have found hope. I found her living in the eyes of Paco, in the faces of the women of Guinea, in the voices of the children in Ecuador. I found her because she holds the hand of ADRA. I found her because she holds the hand of God.

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Mabel Valdivia is a graduate student at American University who serves as a technical assistant for planning for the Adventist Development and Relief Agency, traveling around the world much of the year.