Stories Of Hope

At first glance, the only things St. Louis, San Juan and Denver might seem to have in common are the dysfunction and disorder you’d find in any big U.S. city. But in these three places, there are three people who have one very important thing in common. They each have a story to tell, and that story is brought to you by the Annie Armstrong Easter Offering. To learn more about how God uses your gifts to the Annie Armstrong Easter Offering to meet needs and change lives, go to AnnieArmstrong.com. To learn more about how you can meet needs and see God change lives, go to SendRelief.org.

Sometimes, what you know is not as important as who you know. For instance, if you were Adam Pursel and you’d planted a church in your hometown of Mount Vernon, Ohio and then you’d decided to try and feed public school kids who were going hungry over the weekends, it would help to know people. This is a story about the hurdles the gospel can clear when a church’s pastor just happens to know almost everyone in town. Find out how you can strengthen communities at SendRelief.org.

Betty Kress knew she was in over her head. Betty attends a small church in Kingsport, TN. She is not influential. She has no powerful friends. And she most definitely does not speak Spanish. And yet, when she heard a story about Jorge Santiago, a church planter in Puerto Rico, she knew she was the one that God had chosen to come to his church’s rescue. This is the story of how Betty did a big thing she didn’t think she could ever do. To hear an earlier Stories of Hope episode about Jorge and how God is using him to meet needs in Puerto Rico, listen to “Let There Be Electricity.” Find out how you can help strengthen communities at SendRelief.org/

What is Elizabeth Amada* up against? Human trafficking is a 150-billion-dollar a year industry and Elizabeth works with Send Relief to help rescue women from the red-light districts of her Southeast Asian city. In this episode, hear how God uses her to meet needs and change the lives of people who’re caught up in the world of human trafficking. Find out how you can help rescue people from the world of human trafficking at SendRelief.org/ *name changed  

The evidence was hidden inside an obscure file cabinet inside an obscure Atlanta office. The day Carlos Ferrer discovered that evidence was the day he finally understood just how faithful God had been. This is the story of Carlos’ 30-year refugee journey from start to finish and then back to start again. Find out how you can serve refugees at SendRelief.org.

Ask Jim and Jeannie Slaughenhoup about their family, and they’ll show you pictures of their grandkids in Alabama and tell you about their extended family from Syria, Pakistan and Afghanistan. In this holiday encore episode of Stories of Hope, hear what happened when two very ordinary grandparents started a cooking class for refugee women in Clarkston, Georgia.

Emily Medina did the best she could. But Emily was an unemployed, single mother of three who lived in one of New York City’s poorest neighborhoods. Monthly public assistance checks were the only way she was able to keep her head above water. In this episode of Stories of Hope, hear how a Send Relief ministry center in the South Bronx helped her earn the job title of “artisan”, and in so doing, provided a creative, sustainable way for Emily to support her family. Especially during this Christmas season, you can support artisans like Emily. To see how, go to worldcrafts.org. And just like Send Relief partners are helping women like Emily build sustainable businesses to support themselves, you and your church can build relationships and change lives. For ideas on how to strengthen communities. Go to SendRelief.org.

Her plan had been to escape to Canada. After that, Eben-Esia Kamusuvise had no plan. This is a story about how and why a young mother and her 4-year old daughter left their home and traveled 7,000 miles to start what they assumed would be a new life, anonymously and invisibly and completely alone. Find out how you can serve refugees at SendRelief.org.

Before Hurricane Dorian slammed into the Bahamas in the fall of 2019, no one could’ve predicted that two years later, people there would still be struggling to recover. In this episode of Stories of Hope, Send Relief directors David and Jo Brown and their neighbors in the Bahamas share the horrifying things they experienced during the storm, and the beautiful things they’ve experienced since then.

In a place where the average income is $1.50 per day, people will sometimes go to extremes just to survive. In this episode of Stories of Hope, travel to one of the world’s most infamous red-light districts in Southeast Asia and learn what it’s like to come face to face with boys and girls and men and women who are trafficked. Learn how you and your church can help people who’ve been trafficked at sendrelief.org/focus-areas/fight-human-trafficking.

When Cindy Hood volunteered to lead a Sunday School class missions project at her Knoxville, Tennessee church, she had no idea what she was getting into. This episode of Stories of Hope is about what happened when Cindy signed up to help welcome a refugee family into her community, and then once she’d done so, discovered she couldn’t stop with just one. Go to sendrelief.org/focus-areas/care-for-refugees to learn how you and your church can reach out to families who’re coming to your community from other countries.    

Before the pandemic ever hit West Africa, the nation of Côte d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast) was already facing severe food shortages. Associate Area Directors Wesley and Emily Smyth sat down with us for this week’s Stories of Hope episode and tell a story about how Global Hunger Relief projects are meeting needs and changing lives of families who’re facing starvation in this developing country.

Over the past several weeks, Brad Lovin did everything he could to get Ali out of Afghanistan. It was the least he could do—after all, Ali, a Pashtun Afghani Muslim man, was and is Brad’s best friend. In this episode of Stories of Hope, follow Brad as he desperately tries to help Ali and his family escape the Taliban in the closing days of the war in Afghanistan and find out how you and your church can help Afghan refugees who are now arriving in North America. Go to sendrelief.org/projects/afghanistan-crisis for more information on how you and your church can care for Afghan refugees.

There are more than 36 million American adults who cannot read and write well enough to follow the directions on a medicine bottle or fill out a job application. If that number sounds high to you, there’s probably a reason: most functionally illiterate people go to great lengths to hide their problem. In this episode of Stories of Hope, Claudean Boatman and two Literacy Missions volunteers she has helped train tell their miracle story about what happened when a tutor met a student. Go to sendrelief.org/projects/literacy to learn how you and your church can share the gospel while at the same time, help children and adults learn to read and write.

Sociologists and criminologists have gathered enough statistics and published enough studies to ensure that now, if anyone knows anything about East St. Louis, what they know is probably bad. And yet, in this episode of Stories of Hope, Chet Cantrell would like to set the record straight. To him, his adopted hometown is one of the most beautiful places on earth, and he has the stories to prove it. Go to SendRelief.org to learn how you and your church can help strengthen communities.

If you can walk to your kitchen, turn on the faucet and make water come out, congratulations. You are blessed. Right now, there are 785 million people who have to walk and search and work and dig just to get enough water to survive another day. In this episode of Stories of Hope, Send Relief partners in the African nation of Burkina Faso tell how when they brought water to one community, they discovered quenching people’s thirst was only the beginning of what they were called to do. Go to SendRelief.org/Poverty to learn how you and your church can reach out to people who lack the basics of life.

It all started one Sunday when Southern Baptist missionary Randy Babin was visiting a new church in Marshall, Texas. There were people there from other countries, and when Randy asked them why and how they’d come to America, some of them were reluctant to answer. In this episode of Stories of Hope, hear what happened when Randy came face to face with a hidden community of people who didn’t want to hide anymore. Find out how you can serve refugees and internationals at SendRelief.org/

The world sometimes refers to hurricanes, floods and tornadoes as “acts of God.” Jan Kragness does too, but for a very different reason. In this episode of Stories of Hope, hear why this 70-something year old grandmother now performs the simple but tedious and stressful task of driving from disaster to disaster, finding people who need to talk and then listening to their stories. Go to SendRelief.org/focus-areas/respond-to-crisis to learn how you and your church can reach out to families who’re looking for hope in the middle of life’s storms.

Every year, thousands of people escape war, persecution and poverty and come to America to start a new life. That, you know. But where in America these people settle might surprise you. In this episode of Stories of Hope, travel to a small town in Oklahoma and hear the story of what happened when churches and businesses and schools all realized at the same time that their community was suddenly welcoming the world. Find out how you can serve refugees at SendRelief.org.

If there’s anything Morgan Proudfoot and the people at Grace Harbor Church in New Bedford, Massachusetts, know, it is this: a job is a very powerful thing. In this episode of Stories of Hope, hear the amazing things Morgan and his church discovered could happen when they helped put their unemployed neighbors to work. Go to SendRelief.org/Poverty to learn how you and your church can reach out to people who lack the basics of life.