Photo used by permission. (c) 2023 Keenan Morgan, Hope's Promise Kenya Connection Trip, Mathare Valley treasure. We walked their community where half a million people live in six square miles of abject poverty. We slipped in its sewage-laced mud; ducked under its live, pirated-electricity wires; crowded into its one-room, windowless homes; gazed over its garbage…Read more Unspeakable Treasure, Tucked Into the Cracks
Travel
Hope and transformation in Vietnam
Our friend tells our team that we will visit a village in the mountains where two kids started their lives who are now members of a Hope's Promise family for orphaned children and where Hope’s Promise implements a Thrive scholarship group for thirty orphaned and vulnerable children who live with relatives. That’s about all we…Read more Hope and transformation in Vietnam
Unquenchable
When I was young, I consumed missionary biographies like candy. These people seemed so daring, brave, other-worldly. Pressing to the ends of the earth with a message more valuable than their very lives. I read of men and women who lived for years with unreached people groups, simply to learn the language so the Bible…Read more Unquenchable
God of The Details
Su on a boat in Ha Long Bay Allow me to share a story of hope with you. High in a Vietnamese mountain village, cheerful, brightly colored tribal clothing adorned a girl. But the orphaned child's eyes were dull, and the corners of her mouth inevitably turned downward. In her village, Su was known as “the girl…Read more God of The Details
Be Bold
Even before 2020, the poorest of the poor in Zimbabwe faced seemingly insurmountable odds. Some of those people, like Linda*, lacking even a home after her husband died, fled to unoccupied stretches of land and constructed mud huts by hand. Even as Linda lost so much, though, she accumulated grandchildren as their parents died or…Read more Be Bold
World Children’s Day
He’s a living breathing Pied Piper. Everywhere he goes, children trail after him. In a Kenyan man called Pastor Karau, the legend becomes visible in real time, albeit with a happy ending. In his home culture, Pastor Karau walks the winding, muddy lanes of the second largest slum in East Africa, seeking out the last…Read more World Children’s Day
Across the World
Across the world, we assume we are so different. Separated by geography, customs, food, governments, and economic and class status. And then the unimaginable happens, chaos encompasses the globe in a universal experience. And we realize we have so much more in common than we ever imagined. Unemployment and scarcity, vulnerability to disease, loneliness, death.…Read more Across the World
When Tracking Rhino, Don’t Wear Red…
By the time the park ranger warns against wearing red, it's too late. He tucks my friend in line right after him, hiding her bright shirt behind his camouflaged green. And his big gun. We hope it will be enough. We wind down a rutted dirt road, then veer off into the bush. Grass swishes…Read more When Tracking Rhino, Don’t Wear Red…
Orphans in Zimbabwe
Photo: kids in Zimbabwe along for the ride to fill water containers I'm currently en route from Bulawayo, Zimbabwe to Colorado, wrestling with the joys and tragedies I witnessed of a courageous people under the siege of a bankrupt economy. Why are kids orphaned in Zimbabwe? What are their lives like? Travel along vicariously with…Read more Orphans in Zimbabwe
Orphans in N Vietnam
In 2006, after adopting two kids from a Kenyan orphanage and being haunted by the ones we left behind, my beloved husband of now 26 years and I helped open Sanctuary of Hope in Kenya, where Hope's Promise now cares for 24 orphans in two families. In the process, I came on staff with Hope's…Read more Orphans in N Vietnam
Colleen Briggs Art & Writing 