{"id":10743,"date":"2013-09-12T09:05:43","date_gmt":"2013-09-12T14:05:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/theamericanjesus.net\/?p=10743"},"modified":"2013-09-12T09:05:43","modified_gmt":"2013-09-12T14:05:43","slug":"if-you-give-a-mom-a-fish","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/zackhunt\/2013\/09\/if-you-give-a-mom-a-fish\/","title":{"rendered":"If You Give A Mom A Fish"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"wvmomanddaughter2\"<\/a><\/p>\n

(H\/T Matthew Paul Turner<\/a>)<\/p>\n

This week I\u2019m in Guatemala with the relief organization World Vision, witnessing and reporting on all the incredible work they are doing here. This is the first in a series of posts I\u2019ll be sharing each day about my experiences. I hope you find them interesting, but more importantly I hope in some small way they inspire you to act.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

I would be nothing without my mother.<\/p>\n

And my grandmother.<\/p>\n

And my aunts.<\/p>\n

And all the other strong women in my life who have profoundly shaped who I am as a person and how I look at the world.<\/p>\n

A big part of the reason they have had so much influence in my life is that my father had none.<\/p>\n

I still remember that day in first grade when we spent the day together eating pizza at Mr. Gatti\u2019s and shopping for baseball cards before heading back to my house to play basketball on the small hoop in my driveway.<\/p>\n

A cigarette break later and my life changed forever.<\/p>\n

I can still remember him putting out his cigarette in the driveway before pausing to deliver the bad news.<\/p>\n

He was moving away.<\/p>\n

I was shellshocked when he told me and can still remember bursting into angry tears on the spot, but what I didn\u2019t know then was that that would be the last time I would see him and one of the last times I would hear from him until I was in college.<\/p>\n

In the nearly two decades in between those two meetings I became a witness to the essential transformative importance of powerful women in my life, particularly my mother.<\/p>\n

Without her I wouldn\u2019t be who I am today.<\/p>\n

I thought about that today while I watched a training session for World Vision\u2019s Madre Gu\u00eda, or Guide Mother program.<\/p>\n

Like myself, many of the children World Vision finds sponsors for are raised primarily by women because their fathers have stepped out of their lives for one reason or another. So, like my mother, the burden for raising them and feeding them and taking care of them and teaching them all the things they need to know in life falls on their mothers.<\/p>\n

Unlike my mother, their moms are born with the deck of life stacked against them. They\u2019re born into poverty and simply don\u2019t have all the resources we take for granted that teach us the ins and outs of providing our children with things like proper nutrition, education, and preventative healthcare.<\/p>\n

This is where the Guide Mothers step in. They\u2019re veteran moms teaching new moms how to give their children the best chance and the best possible future.<\/p>\n

One of the things I love so much about World Vision\u2019s Guide Mother program is that isn\u2019t a buch of privileged Americans telling underprivileged Guatemalans what to do and how to think.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s Guatemalan mothers sharing their wisdom with other Guatemalan mothers so that together they can give their children the future they deserve and in turn reshape their entire community for the better.<\/p>\n

What I didn\u2019t realize before today is that by sponsoring a child through World Vision you\u2019re also sponsoring a mom<\/a>.<\/p>\n

When you sponsor a child, part of that money goes towards funding the Guide Mother program. Which makes a lot of sense if you think about it.<\/p>\n

We all know that old Chinese proverb \u2013 Give a man fish, feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, feed him for a lifetime. Yes, it\u2019s cheesy and, yes, it\u2019s absurdly cliche, but it also sums up the relationship between World Vision\u2019s child sponsorship and Guide Mother programs pretty well.<\/p>\n

Money and food and education and healthcare are great, but those sponsored children need a mother who knows what sort of things to feed them so they will grow healthy and strong. They need a mom who understands and appreciates the opportunities they will have if they\u2019re made to do their homework and finish school. And they need a mother who can recognize how sick they really are and take them to the doctor when their fever gets too high.<\/p>\n

Without empowered and equipped mothers, World Vision\u2019s child sponsorship program simply wouldn\u2019t be as effective as it is.<\/p>\n

And without you neither program would work at all.<\/p>\n

I am living proof of how important a mother is in the life of her child.<\/p>\n

World Vision\u2019s Guide Mother program is proof that a community working together can change the course of its future.<\/p>\n

And to borrow from my new Guatemalan friend Francisco, if you choose to sponsor a child and their mother<\/a>, you become the proof that somebody loves them and believes in them and believes that with just a little bit of help they can create a community of hope and opportunity for themselves and their neighbors.<\/p>\n

So,\u00a0I hope you\u2019ll consider sponsoring a child today<\/a> because it\u2019s not just one life you\u2019ll be changing.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s an entire neighborhood.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Grace and peace,<\/p>\n

Zack Hunt<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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