A DEEPER LOOK
SO CONSIDER THIS...SOME OF WHAT WE DO AND WHY WE DO IT!!!As you can probably tell we work on a wide range of projects, from Orphanages to homeless families, from the United States to Kenya, Videos and media presentations to public speaking seminars and workshops. Your right we are involved in a lot of different things. You may be asking why? What’s an orphan in Mexico or Kenya and a homeless family in the United States have to do with someone who is battling an eating disorder or mental illness? The answer is much more simple than you think. Every person that we reach out to, both men and women and children from every nation and walk of life have one thing in common. They have experienced being broken. Families have fallen apart leaving children to walk life alone or in orphanages. Mistakes have been made by us, or people around us and someone ends up homeless or having a complete mental break down or strung out on drugs. Someone is hurting so bad they resort to starving themselves or making themselves throw up everything they eat just so they can feel something, feel in control of what otherwise seems like an out of control life. From the orphans in Africa to the young women battling an eating disorder there is pain, a sense of being alone and a sense of feeling powerless. In essence there is a broken life! But a broken life does not mean worthless, a broken heart is not beyond repair!This organization was created to rebuild what has been broken and to educate and empower. How many people are disqualified in life due to a mistake? How many people fall into the same mistakes as their parents or families? How many make mistakes or cause pain to someone else because they never dealt with the issues of the past?We are an organization all about finding value in the people our society has overlooked and using them to impact their communities. We know what it’s like to have a hard past to overcome and a lot of hurts from life but we proudly want to show our scars from battle. We want to educate and encourage others through our stories and our mistakes in life. Growing and healing go hand in hand and they take a lifetime. A plant that is no longer growing is dead! We find value in everyone, we want to help the orphans, the homeless and bring hope back to the hopeless!We plan on raising money for much needed aid throughout our country and others. We will be holding events to open the eyes of the blind towards some of life's toughest issues and to increase awareness and compassion towards those issues. We are willing to talk about those things that no one else wants to talk about! We will hold seminars to help people break the powers of the past. We will motivate and equip those willing to move on to a better life, and show them how to change their communities. We will show the orphan that they are loved and valued. We will teach the homeless man or women how to come back into being a part of society and get out of the cycle they are in. We will say, “I CARE ABOUT YOU” and prove that we MEAN IT! We are committed to helping with problems that are social, financial, emotional, spiritual, physical, and economical in this country and in others around the globe!WHAT YOU CAN EXPECT COMING FROM US AND WHYWhy is it that when something bad happens to you, such as abuse or molestation, automatically people don't see you as someone with value? You may have been abused as a child and as you got older you had some issues mentally coping or turned to drugs or alcohol or made some mistakes. We live in a society where the "weak" are ruled out and told they can't do it. Or worse are made to feel like they aren't worth the time. We don't believe that. H.A.N.D.S. has come to the conclusion that we are all messed up. Some of us on the board know what it feels like to be abused. We know the affects of making a mistake and having a family abandon you. We know what being homeless is like and some of us even know what having an eating disorder or being on the verge of committing suicide is like. We know what it feels like to get to a place where you feel like you have lost your mind! We understand what pain from circumstance is and we are doing this because we have been there! We can understand without judging! We all have flaws and we all have weaknesses. You may know someone or you may be someone who has social issues due to a bad experience in your past such as abuse. Maybe you or someone you are thinking about right now has fallen to an addiction or drugs, sex, or alcohol and are feeling worthless and alone. Some people no longer feel equal to everyone else because of addiction. Others have gotten themselves into such bad situations and addictions that they have lost everything and are homeless. Some have lost their will to fight for something better and are stuck. They feel like the world has given up on them and so they have given up on themselves. Their only way out may be if someone helps them. Most people just turn their heads when they cross the path of a man or women on the street. They look away and think the homeless man is on drugs and not trying hard enough. You may be asking “why worry about places like Mexico or Kenya? They are not our problem! Or you may be thinking, so she lost her mind, commit her, bring her to a shelter and leave her there, she is not affecting my life. It’s OK if you have thought this way. We all have at one time or another. We want to give you some new ideas though. Please give us a minute to take you on a journey through our minds and into our heart. We want to help you understand where we are coming from…Take a moment and think about some of the situations and questions below…If you take these situations seriously I bet you get something out of them!How about the drug addict? The person addicted to the bottle of alcohol? Have you seen them at the local bar, watched a friend or family become torn apart because of the affects of some addiction and looked at them in disgust? Have you talked to others about them and thought it was not worth your time to deal with? Maybe it’s someone in your own family maybe not but have you looked at them like they are not worthwhile? At one time or another we have all judged someone for some type of addiction and we all know someone that has suffered in some way because of the affects of drugs or alcohol.BUT… Have you considered why they may be taking drugs in the first place?I need you to picture yourself sleeping like a baby for just a minute. You work a full time job and you get off of work and come home. You have your nightly routine and curl up to go to sleep…. Sound familiar? But let’s add something here… all of a sudden you start to dream. It’s not some ordinary dream, oh no, it’s a nightmare. It’s a nightmare where you relive every detail of being raped a few years before. You’re sound asleep yet you can smell him, you can see his face, you can hear his voice and feel him on you. You wake up just a few short hours from when you fell asleep screaming or crying hysterically. It takes you almost a half hour just to stop crying and know that you are safe again! Now imagine that being what your night is like every single night for one or two months at a time. You try counseling, you try everything and finally the only thing left to do is not sleep. You clean the house all night long, you read, dance to music in the living room, anything so you don’t sit still long enough to fall asleep. You have to work and carry on like there is nothing wrong so you start drinking more coffee. Just a few cups more every morning to help you function at your desk at work, then you start drinking coffee at night, then when that’s not enough you switch to caffeine pills, energy drinks, energy pills, anything it takes to stay awake and keep your mind from reliving what happened, anything so that you are not raped again. You may never take street drugs but you have still become a drug addict! Does having a drug addiction in this scenario seem so incomprehensible? Is it unforgivable? Is the women living it a waste of your time? The reason for the addiction does not make the addiction OK but it does help us in understanding why people struggle with certain things. It helps us see that under the addiction, under the mask is a person of value and worth that is broken and hurting and sometimes just needs someone to help them realize that they are cared about. You never know what the people around you have been through and what has gotten them to the point that they are at!Think about your life, those tough spots you have hit. Did you ever want to just give up? Did you ever think about just throwing in the towel and giving into something that you know is wrong but for some reason seems so right at the time? Maybe that person had a really rough childhood. Maybe they are going through a tough time at home now. Maybe the stress of work is so much they just can’t take it anymore or maybe it just numbs some piece of them that they can’t even identify.We have all looked at pictures of kids from nations around the world, felt a little bad but then gone on with out day and done nothing. It’s OK, we have all done it at one time or another. Some of us may have gone on making a comment like “they are in a different country, why bother, they are not our problem”. Or maybe you pay taxes and figure that’s all you owe in life and it’s the government’s job. Have you done anything for orphans in the United States? Orphans may not seem to directly affect your life…BUT… Have you ever stopped to ask yourself how these kids may affect you? They do affect you. The orphan in Africa does and can affect you! When a disease like aides, the very disease that killed both of that child’s parents in front of them starts running as wild in America as it does in Africa, you will start to care. How about more and more people fleeing from the economic corruption of Mexico to any form of peace they can try to find in America! This will affect you! If they had anything close to an acceptable form of life do you think so many would be dying? Do you think so many would be fleeing their countries and trying to get to the United States? Look around your house tonight, go into your children’s rooms or open your closet. You have more in your bathroom cabinet then most of the families of the kids in Mexico have in their entire home! Your homes have 4 walls and a roof, most of the homes of the kids that we help with in Mexico don’t have walls, some don’t have roof’s and some did not have homes at all! Yes kids can be homeless too, and that’s hard to think about when they live in America, walk the streets in Mexico or Africa or Cuba or the Dominican Republic and try thinking about being a homeless child in one of those countries! Some kids have lost their families because structures have collapsed and killed all of them. The kids in Africa live in huts made out of mud, no regular water, no electricity, yet our 5 year old son’s have 10 pairs of Levi pants and every superhero that has ever come out. There is nothing wrong with having what you have but why can’t we give to those that don’t have? The smallest bit of anything means the world to them! Just consider, the homeless in America have more and are richer than almost any of the kids that are orphans in Mexico or Africa!Have you ever laughed at someone or about someone that you knew had an eating disorder? Maybe made jokes about how thin she was and how stupid she was acting. Said something like “she is making the choice, she can eat anytime she wants so whatever” its not my problem! We all have at one time or another!BUT… Have you ever stopped and asked yourself WHY she may be throwing up? Have you ever wondered WHY she won’t eat anything and is slowly torturing herself and killing herself! What makes her do it, why would anyone do it? Did you ever stop to consider that the first time she made herself throw up might have been at her mothers funeral, after watching her mom die of cancer in front of her as a teenager? Maybe she stopped eating the day her dad left or the day they arrested her Grandfather for molesting her all those years. Have you ever felt so out of control in your life and hated yourself so much that your hate was strong enough to allow you to walk into a bathroom, stick your fingers down your throat and get rid of everything in your stomach and for some reason have that be the only thing that makes you feel better? Imagine what you feel like when you miss one and at the worst two meals, how much your stomach hurts… Now imagine feeling so out of control and hating yourself so much that you resort to starving yourself to death, that you not only won’t eat anything but when you do you spend HOURS working out just to be sure that there is less on your bones! The only identity you feel like you have is found on the numbers you see in the scale! That is what she is feeling, so who is going to take her seriously. If she really does want help but does not know how to feel loved, maybe she has been starving or throwing up for so long she does not know how to live without doing it! Who is going to help her? Who is going to remind her and show her that she has value in something other than her weight and who is going to tell her she is beautiful and make her believe it?We have all assumed that the homeless man begging for money at the end of the freeway off ramp is strung out on drugs, and if you give him anything he will probably use it to just buy more drugs… We are not going to tell you that you are wrong because in fact, that may be true!BUT… Have you ever stopped to ask yourself why? Why is he standing there why is he on drugs? Take a moment to consider this….Do you know what its like to get cold? I mean cold to the point where you feel like you are going to freeze to death, where every movement in your body is painful because your bones ache with the chill of the air. Do you know what that is like when there is no reprieve from it, when there is no warm car to climb into, fireplace to sit in front of or heater to turn on? That man knows what it feels like. He may be taking drugs, but why? Did you ever think that it could be because the drugs or alcohol numb the bitter pain of a relentlessly cold night? Have you ever felt unsafe? Do you know how unsafe you are when you are homeless? Maybe drugs are the only way to stay awake and keep from closing your eyes and risking what might happen if you do! This is the reality of being homeless. We can say this and understand it because we have talked to people living on the street and some of our board has lived it themselves! You don’t know what he has been through or why he is on that corner, he may not be on drugs at all! It’s true, not everyone on the street does drugs! You just don’t know. Homeless shelters are not as easy to get into and be at as you might think. What will it take to get him off the streets? Who is willing to go talk to him and find out?Last but certainly not least…. One more thing to consider…So this is our heart. I hope you are just a little able to understand what is going on with us and why we do what we do. Some of the scenarios above are very real for some of our board. Some of us have been where the people that we are trying to help currently are. There are people on our board that know what its like to be orphaned from a parent, more than one of us knows first hand what it’s like to be abused as child, molested, beaten, we know what it’s like to live through an abusive marriage, live in a domestic violence shelter, be homeless, have a complete mental breakdown, some of the people on our board know what it’s like to live with the effects of having an eating disorder, we know what it’s like to be raped and to have an entire family turn their backs. We know how it feels to have nightmares, turn to some type of drug to dull the pain, we understand what it feels like to sit on the brink of suicide with the gun in one hand and nothing but a final decision to make! We don’t look at people for where they are. We don’t seem them as being only as valuable as the situation they are living in. We see them for the heroes they could be if given the chance and if they have the desire. We see them for the potential that is inside of them. We understand that with a little bit of love and guidance everyone has something to offer. Hey look at us!!!WE HAVE LIVED IT! WE HAVE BEEN THERE! WE HAVE BEEN THE ONES THAT SOMEONE OVERLOOKED! WE HAVE BEEN THE ONES THAT NO ONE SAW VALUE IN! WE HAVE HAD PEOPLE AROUND US, EVEN OUR OWN FAMILIES CONSIDER US UNWORTHY OF A SECOND CHANCE! WE HAVE BEEN TOLD WE ARE WORTHLESS, UNWORTHY, BROKEN, CRAZY, AND STUPID AND AT ONE POINT EACH OF US HAS BELIEVED IT! AND WE ARE HERE NOW TO TELL YOU AND TO TELL THE WORLD THAT NO ONE IS ALONE!!! NO ONE IS BEYOND REPAIR OR TOO FAR GONE TO MATTER ANYMORE! WE ARE LIVING PROOF THAT NO MATTER WHAT HAPPENS PEOPLE CAN OVERCOME IF GIVEN THE CHANCE, PEOPLE CAN CHANGE IF SOMEONE HELPS THEM! SOMETIMES WE CAN'T DO IT ON OUR OWN BUT WE CAN DO IT IF SOMEONE IS WILLING TO HELP US, TO BELIEVE IN US! EVERYONE DESERVES A CHANCE TO BE LOVED! EVERYONE HAS SOMETHING TO OFFER THE WORLD AROUND THEM AND EVERYONE HAS SOMETHING TO SAY THAT IS WORTH LISTENING TOO!Each of us do this because our hearts have been changed by what we have lived through in our lives, or what we know about the life of someone else on the board and it has sparked the need in us to rise up and make a difference. We see that when given the chance people can change. We know this because we have already seen what an impact we have had on each other in tough times and then turned around and seen that same impact reach into the community. We see that when loved properly children can grow into powerful young adults. We believe in the people around us. We believe in impacting our community. We believe that the bum on the street could be the next president or vice president of a powerful corporation if given the tools, and becoming equipped. Where there is a will there is a way. We will help anyone that shows they truly have a will to change their lives. We want to help make that change become a reality. Sometimes all you need is a little motivation, a little ambition, a little hope and a little love! We are going to reach out and help the orphans, one day we want to build an orphanage, a domestic violence shelter and community centers both here and in other nations, we want to speak to the hearts of people at our seminars, we will change our community and impact our world! We are H.A.N.D.S. ON and we are knocking on the door of all who want to know what MORE TO LIFE is all about!
