The Gift

  During our youth, we spend the days, if not months, before this Christmas holiday, wanting. If you are over 40, you may remember doing that “wanting” by thumbing through the Sears catalog, one miraculous page at a time, dog-earing the ultra thin pages, and making our list, so Santa would know exactly what we wanted under the tree.
Something internal shifts as we become older. Responsibilities grow, material objects take on less meaning, and we realize what is really important at this most holy of holidays. And here is the big reveal, which we all already know but a little reminder never hurts.
When two of our board members lost their father a few weeks ago, he didn’t take a single item to the grave with him. All that is left of his life is the memories of the people he chose to have relationships with.

Our Finding Freedom through Friendship mothers know their priorities better than most. All of them have experienced loss in profound ways, either through the death of a husband, a child or the passing of parents who helped support them. When FFF first brought each of these mothers into our program, they were either living with relatives or renting huts with roofs that leaked onto dirt floors. Their children went to bed hungry and often missed school while they accompanied their mother’s to the fields to work.
Does the fact that they came into our program with so little mean that they wish for nothing? Not at all, but their “wanting” is a bit different than ours. Sinks, tables, beds…essential and rudimentary household items are what they hope for.  And they wish for freedom from worry. 

Catarina and daughters with new Guatemalan sink

Our volunteers are often given small gifts from the women and children we help. They are usually hand made, and given from the heart. The best gifts of all- – three apples picked from a nearby tree, a handwoven belt, or a piece of loomed textile. Gifts from women and children who know what empty feels like: empty cupboards; empty huts; empty promises.
Marta (left) is full of hope for a better future. By definition, the word hope means to open your heart to possibility. 
Our Christmas gift to Marta, and the other 42 children in our program is not only the daily meals we provide, or the school supplies we purchase or even the new shoes we give them. Finding Freedom through Friendship offers the intangible gift of hope. You can see it in her face; read it in her note; catch it in the glimmer in her eyes. 

Feliz Navidad