Thinking Differently

I was reading an article the other day titled "Why Poor People make bad decisions"  While the article was a touch inaccurate and slightly condescending, it did make me think a lot about our work.  By giving someone a new home, not only is it moving them in the direction away from poverty, it does helps them think differently, so making better decisions.
A wise man once said that a definition of poverty is "A Lack of Options." When you are poor you have no option of where you live, or where, or even if, your kids can go to school. No option of where you shop, or what you can do if your kids get sick. You have no option to even think of the future. All your thinking is; "What can i do to get through today." We have found that Homes Of Hope does help people think differently. When families have a roof over their head and the immediate stress of the Day to Day is gone, they start to think about the future. They dream about what their kids will do when they finish school, they think about their legacy. During a Homes Of Hope dedication ceremony recently, the dad of the family, with tears rolling down his face, said to the build team "With this house, i can dream about the future - Now i can make my family proud - Now i can leave an inheritance to my kids when im gone.

​Last week we built a house for the Cardenas Montoya family. Lizbeth, is a single mother and has been raising her family of 4 teenage kids in a small room. No running water or Electricity makes life very hard, but they all had big smiles on their faces. Lizbeth works cleaning other houses in the area, and earns about 500Pesos ($30USD) a week. Which from my experience is not enough to feed and cloth half a  hungry teenager, let alone 4 of them. Their new Home Of Hope is going to help this family to think about the future. To help them dream and to help them think differently.