To be fair, this is my 6th challenge so I've learned a lot the hard way about what to cook and what not to cook. And I have the help of my girlfriend's genius cooking skills to help me improvise even further (she's doing her own challenge with a separate $30 shopping list). But even with all of these advantages, I'm still often left hungry with such a drastic reduction in calories.
And that got me to thinking. I often talk about one of the goals of our nutrition programs at Peace Gospel / She Has Hope being to help the students keep their minds off of their hunger and enabling them to focus more on their studies.
With this kind of hunger, it is often times the most dominant thought on your mind. It's like your brain stops everything to say, wait a second, what are you doing, you should be looking for more calories!
It is so hard to concentrate. On this blog. On emails. On phone calls. On just about anything other than cooking. I have noticed on these challenges that I become much more scatterbrained, making really obvious mistakes. Today I forgot my car keys twice and I left a box on the top of my car, just a couple of examples.
When you have an abundance of food, you don't stop to think about how fundamentally important that food (and the diversity of it) is to your daily existence.
You don't stop to think of how desperate you would become if this abundance was reduced to an equivalent of just $1 worth of food, every. single. day.
If someone suggested that he could help you find a better job that would pay 5 times what you are earning now, and you starting dreaming of all you could buy in the market, might you be more willing to believe his lies?
What risks would you take to alleviate your hunger and the hunger of your family?
Daily hunger? Hunger that dominates your thinking?
When I'm doing these challenges it always helps me deeply empathize with the desperation human trafficking victims must be feeling when they are deceived by the tricks and traps of the traffickers.
It gives me a deeper understanding of what thoughts they must be facing and why their judgment is compromised.
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And that brings me back to the charitable financial goal of this challenge and why we're doing this.
I have come to believe that one of the biggest problems we face in our world is not a lack of resources, but a lack of belief that our small contributions can make a difference.
But if we pool even small resources together and set them into motion in a recurring fashion, the math takes over and over time, starts to make a huge difference.
That's where this monthly donor "heart-chart" comes into play.
It's the miracle of what a nerdy math friend pointed out is actually called "the sum of consecutive integers" coupled with the power of multiplying that sum over several months, or even over several years!
It so happens that if you add all the consecutive numbers between 11 and 60, it comes to 1,775. And multiplying this by 12 it becomes 21,300.
And now we can all agree that we can make a charitable difference with $21,300, right?
Especially in a country like Uganda where an amount like that would represent 35.5 years of income!
So please consider overcoming your indifference toward your own power to save a life, and sponsor a heart on this chart.
You could say the formula is something like this:
(Your Small Contribution + Others) * Monthly Recurring = Deep Impact Over Time
Here's where we are today! We've picked up 2 more hearts for a total of $323 in monthly giving we've gathered together thanks to all of us choosing action over apathy!
Over 12 months that will become $3,876 which is amazing when you think that it started from me investing just $30 in food to raise some awareness and catalyze some action!
Ready to join in? Here's how:
Just tap on this chart and then on the next page choose the amount of the heart you want to sponsor, choose the day of the month you want your donation to be charged each month, enter your details, and you're done!
Then tomorrow I will fill in your heart to represent the progress we're making!
Today I'll include some more of my photos that will give you a better idea of what extreme poverty looks like. These are from the Katoogo slum colony in Kampala, Uganda where the Peace Gospel Children's Hope Center School is located.
It's also a reminder to myself, even though I have seen it with my own eyes, that we have so much to be thankful for in our everyday lives:
- running water
- heat in the winter
- a comfortable bed
- a sanitary toilet that flushes away to a place we never have to touch or look at
- a kitchen with modern appliances and a roof to cover it
and even more luxurious:
- a hot shower
- a clothes washing machine
- a machine to dry our clothes
- a security alarm
What are you thankful for?
On to today's meals and snacks I was able to enjoy from improvising with the limited ingredients I bought with $30. Here's what I had:
2) Please visit my unofficial sponsor, Amazon.com through this link. 7% of your purchases made through the link are given to the work of Peace Gospel's programs helping orphans, at-risk children of the slums, and human trafficking survivors.
3) If you're compelled by my effort here, please share it with friends. One of the main goals is awareness. So if you can help with that, huge.
4) Leave me feedback. Please comment on this post, especially if you have any ideas about what I should try to cook with these ingredients I have available. I love hearing from you! It really helps!
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