Park Ridge, Illinois. My day wasn’t going as planned. I had an afternoon meeting and letters to sign. Somewhere on my messy desk were the not-quite-final work plans for my maternity leave. An e-mail was half written, waiting to be sent. And then my morning visit with the doctor transitioned to a run to the hospital for tests and ended with my doctor’s cheerful comment: "Well, looks like your baby needs to come today."

My due date was only 11 days away; this shouldn’t have come as a shock. But everyone says first babies come late, and I rarely arrive early for anything. However, my blood pressure was too high, and other tests revealed potential dangers for my baby and me. Without waiting for the stunned look to leave my face, the nurse began administering the drugs to induce labor. And at 4:15 the next morning, Calla Grace burst into our lives, with a hearty scream and big bright eyes.

Mumeya, Rwanda. Nearly 30,000 people live in this rural village near the Tanzanian border. Living in the aftermath of a horrific genocide, the people of the community are rebuilding and recovering from devastating crisis.

The Lutheran Church of Rwanda, founded in 1995 by Tanzanians and Rwandan refugees in Tanzania, is helping in this recovery by leading a process to identify community assets and challenges. The community identified a lack of access to health care as a critical problem.

Residents had to travel 30 kilometers (almost 19 miles) for health care. They walked about half that distance just to reach the paved road where they can get a bus to the hospital. About 12 Mumeya women died during childbirth each year because they couldn’t get there. Many people who were ill stayed at home instead of seeking treatment because the hospital was just too far away and too hard to reach.

What the village of Mumeya was lacking in health care facilities, it made up for in determination, strength, and a key natural resource: rocks. Relying on all three gifts, community members began building their own primary health care facility. For 18 days, community members — mostly women — broke rocks. For 11 days, they cleared the land. They spent 400 hours laying the foundation. These people worked tirelessly to do all they could to ensure their children would lead healthier lives. Your gifts to ELCA World Hunger Appeal augmented their work.

Makaruba Liberathe knows the tragic consequences of a lack of health care and is eager to work with her neighbors to build this facility: "I lost my child on my way to Kibungo hospital. We need a clinic nearby."

Connection to mothers around the world
As I rock my little Calla to sleep every night, I feel connected to those mothers who moved boulders to ensure a better future for their children. Looking into Calla’s trusting eyes, I want to provide my child with all she needs. I can only imagine the painful struggles of mothers and fathers around the world whose children lack health care, nutritious food, clean water, and hope for the future. I give thanks for the care we received during Calla’s birth, and I grieve for the mothers and babies who, lacking adequate medical care, will not survive birth or reach their fullest potential. My prayers for Calla echo the prayers of mothers around the world: that our children will grow in health and wholeness under God’s watchful care.

How would our world be different if we realized that all God’s children are as precious as those in our own lives? Poverty presents the greatest threat to the most vulnerable in any community. Around the world, children are among the most likely to suffer from hunger, poverty-related disease, and disaster. Over 800 million people in the world are chronically hungry, including 5 million children under age five who will die from malnutrition this year. Nearly 3,000 children die of malaria — a preventable disease of poverty — every day. These statistics on poverty are so incomprehensibly devastating that they threaten to overwhelm us into complacency.

Fortunately, those statistics are not the last word on children and poverty. The good news is that your gifts to the ELCA World Hunger Appeal provide a mothering embrace to children living in poverty around the world.

Improving health and self-esteem
San Isidro, Mexico. Concepcion Alba teaches in the mountains of San Isidro at a preschool run by Amextra, an ELCA World Hunger partner serving children in poverty in Mexico. Children enrolled in her preschool class not only learn the basics like colors, letters, and numbers to prepare them to enter elementary school, they and their families are strengthened through Concepcion’s compassionate care. Like all preschoolers, these kids sing songs, complete their daily chores, play games, and learn cooperation and sharing through interaction with other children. Says Concepcion, "I love working with the children, especially in helping them develop strong values. We teach them that they have freedom, but with freedom comes responsibility."

Improving children’s nutrition and health is also a major emphasis of the Amextra preschool program. Parents regularly bring their children to the school to be weighed and to receive vitamins and information The kids get a healthy breakfast each morning and play at a colorful station where they make a game out of brushing their teeth each day. Concepcion also works with the parents of her pupils, offering self-esteem workshops for mothers and programs to help reduce domestic violence.

An important ingredient: self-sufficiency
Kakinzi, Uganda. Milly Muyinga lives in Kakinzi. She was already a mother of eight, but when she heard about two children in her community who had lost their parents to AIDS, she wanted to help. While orphanages exist, it’s much healthier for children to grow up in families in their home communities. Milly was eager to care for these two children orphaned by AIDS, but she needed more income to keep this large family from falling into poverty and hunger.

ELCA World Hunger and Lutheran World Relief (LWR) work with community agencies to provide hunger relief and development. Through those partners, Milly received a $120 micro-loan and was able to get training and — the most important ingredient for self-sufficiency — a treadle sewing machine. Milly now sews all the school uniforms for children in the area. She has skills that will help her build her future and that of her Over time, she will repay that loan, providing funds for other women in her community to build their own businesses. With that small loan, two children who lost their parents to AIDS did not have to lose their community ties.

Advocating for children, families, and neighbors
Concepción, Chile. "Before EPES (Popular Education for Health) I was a nobody," Rosa Manriquez Cifuentes said. "My first husband beat me and didn’t let me leave the house for five years. I attended an EPES workshop and from then on I couldn’t stop." Rosa, her friend Mercedes Quinta Valenzuela, and other brave women advocate for children, families, and neighbors in their poblacíones (poor communities) in Concepción. The women received training through EPES, an ELCA World Hunger partner in Santiago and Concepción founded by the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Chile. But their boldness in advocacy is all their own.

Mercedes, Rosa, and other health promoters lead workshops on topics including self-esteem, children’s health, cancer awareness, and HIV/AIDS. They are community organizers, achieving better sanitation and neighborhood services such as recreation programs for children. They get their neighbors’ attention with street theater, wall murals, marketplace displays, and demonstrations. They get their government’s attention through their persistence and temerity.

Mercedes believes that her most important work is with the children of their neighborhoods. "Children can still be saved," she said, and this belief fuels her work in drug prevention, child immunizations, and alerting parents to preventable childhood diseases. She mothers the children of her poblacíones by boldly proclaiming that they have the right to a healthy and hopeful future.

The transcendence of motherhood
Zarephath, Phoenicia. A widow hosts the traveling prophet Elijah and then grieves the death of her only son. She chastises Elijah, the man of God, for allowing this tragedy to occur. Elijah, in response, cries out three times "O Lord my God, let this child’s life come into him again" (1 Kings 17:21b). And God listens.

This urge to mother — to nurture and protect — transcends gender; we all can serve as protectors and advocates for children nearby and around the world.

My early days of motherhood have been eventful; I’ve joined Calla in midnight sobs when the world overwhelms us both. And I’ve joined her in joyful laughter when she discovers tummy kisses or her wiggling toes. Babies around the world find calm in their mother’s voice humming a familiar lullaby. Infant squeals of delight can be understood in any language. A child’s cry is a universal alert, cutting through the noise of our busy world.

By God’s grace and spirit we, too, hear the cries of parents and children living in poverty around the world and feel compelled to respond. The compassionate and comprehensive work of our World Hunger partners saves children from disease, poverty, and hunger. Our generous gifts to the ELCA World Hunger Appeal support this life-saving work, offering the gift of hope to children and their families.

Blessed are the mothers, fathers, and caring neighbors who love the children of the world.

Kathyrn Sime is director of the ELCA World Hunger and Disaster Appeal.

Donate
You can donate to the ELCA World Hunger Appeal through the Women of the ELCA. Make your check out to "Women of the ELCA" and note "ELCA World Hunger Appeal" on the memo line of the check. Send your check to Women of the ELCA, P.O. Box 71256, Chicago, IL 60694.

Bookmark the ELCA World Hunger Web site: www.elca.org/hunger