There's Hope For TodaySample

She can’t be more than seven-years-old. What is she doing alone on the sidewalks of St. Petersburg? That cute little boy looks as though he doesn’t have a care in the world. What is he doing in an orphanage in Arkangelsk? Her eyes are as green as emeralds, and her smile could light up any room. Why does she sit apart from the other children at school #62 in Tambov? He giggles and laughs like a normal eight-year-old boy. How did he end up in a seven-by-seven prison cell in Chita?

A hundred other Russian children come alive in my memories. Thousands more blend into an overwhelming sea of need. I wake sometimes in the wee hours of the morning having been to Russia in my dreams. The sights, the sounds, the pastel-colored buildings, the over-crowded trains, the rocking of the subways, the school director’s greeting, the roar in the hallways between classes – it’s as if I’ve stepped across a continent in a moment – surprised to wake in America.

For some, it’s the children of the Philippines. For others, it’s the dark-eyed children of Peru. But for all of us who have given a Book of Hope to a child, it’s a shared dream, an uncommon passion, to move beyond our borders and reach the children of the world.