day 30: we did it!

Finish line! I'm absolutely overjoyed to report to you that we (not me, it was all of us doing this together) did it--we raised enough money to meet my "dream" goal of $10,000 (20 scholarships) and then even surpass that to a grand total of $10,600 (21 scholarships). This means that we're in the process of rescuing 21 children who previously had no hope of ever going to school, who made a few extra rupees for their families by working in the trash heaps, searching for recyclable materials. 21 children coming from a life of despair, caught in hazardous barefoot child labor situations, to hope and smiles, to a future that suddenly looks bright.

About a week ago, I blogged that I had sent over the first part of the funds then raised to India. I also reported that our native team had begun the work of informing parents and guardians of children on the wait list (to get into The Children's Hope Center) that they would be receiving scholarships to enroll at the center and go to school! You can imagine the delight of both our native team members and these families as they were able to relish these joyous moments of both sharing and receiving such good news.

The Indian school year began a couple of weeks ago, but we're still in that period of time where latecomers can enroll and not be too far behind. And with our staff there to offer personal tutoring in our after-school program, they will integrate just fine. So these past several days, our native team has had the joy of receiving these new children brought in directly as a result of this campaign! And, if you stay tuned to our Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Flickr and/or Instagram (@peacegospel) channels, you'll get to see scenes of more children coming in over the days ahead!

Here are the photos of these newly enrolled kids earlier this week, receiving their first pairs of shoes, which are required at the schools we're partnered with where they will attend. You'll also see their new backpacks, and in many cases the clothes they are wearing are also provided by the center--when they first come in, if needed, we give them a new set of "home clothes" and a school uniform along with hygiene items, etc.--many have never owned a toothbrush and need to be taught how to use them.

For those of you already familiar with this program, you will notice some of our already existing students in these photos as well. They were very happy to meet and greet their new classmates! Just look at the JOY on the faces of these children! They before only dreamed of owning a pair of shoes, real shoes! (Click on any of the photos to enlarge).

So, we did it. I'm breathing a big sigh of relief that my 30 days, together with your amazing support, really made a difference and has now come to a close. I hope you've learned a few things from my experience here. I hope you've learned the following points:

1) We eat way more than we need and spend too much on food.
2) Simplification does not have to be drab. 
3) Together, we can make a difference if we overcome indifference.
4) Together, we can change the world. Alone, we grow apathetic and defeated.
5) While both are horrible, there's a difference between poverty and extreme poverty.
6) Extreme poverty is an immense problem that requires the effort of the entire world.
7) There's an exponential power in an encouraging word or a hand of support.

I hope that those of you who recently stumbled upon this blog entry and were not able to follow along would go back and read some of my thoughts in the other posts. Some of the posts I felt were the most meaningful were day 25: the power of encouragement, day 14: a different kind of poverty, day 13: sustainability, day 12: one dollar, one hope, one child, and day 10: why simplify?.

But we cannot rest for long. There's so much work to be done. Please visit PeaceGospel.org to see what else we're doing to address issues of extreme poverty not only in India but in 5 other nations in Asia & Africa. Consider how you can join in and stay in the fight. Remember, it's together we can make a difference, if we overcome indifference. So, do something, no matter how small you think your contribution is, because, collectively, it all adds up and becomes an overwhelming and unstoppable movement of change. 

We at Peace Gospel are approaching these challenges from a perspective of empowerment and sustainability. We're empowering native teams to reach their own people, through equipping them with farmland and other small business enterprises. This way, your donations are multiplied and the native teams feel that important sense of ownership in their work. In other words, it's not just handouts!

Some personal notes as I cross the finish line:

If you want to try this, please contact me at kirby {at} PeaceGospel {dot} org. It's not for everyone. If you enjoy cooking and are disciplined with rationing, you can do this. But please contact me first. I've done this three times now and have learned the very hard way what not to do, and have come up with several tips on how to better endure it. 

My feet are doing fine, again, it was a very foreign experience, my feet are calloused and dirty, but I never really found myself walking in conditions anywhere near to what my friends in the slums have to deal with. Because of my bare feet, there were several opportunities to share with people about what I was trying to do. It definitely turned some heads. Today I found this sign... "no bare feet allowed" ... funny, I've been in this store countless times and never before noticed it.

I lost 11 pounds (5 kgs).  It's a testimony to the fact that by eating less and eating a simplified diet, our bodies return to a more natural weight. You can see in my photos of the food, it's not bad-looking food, it's just not an extravagant amount of variety, and not a lot of sheer quantity. I was not overweight, well, maybe a touch, but definitely had a few spare pounds to shed. By drinking more water than I usually would, I also felt much "cleaner" through the 30 days, and probably did cleanse my body of a lot of the unknown, silent toxins we pollute ourselves with in our excessive Western diet.

So, on to the final 3 meals of the 90 I've prepared over the past 30 days. What a marathon of meal preparation! I was left with 3 corn tortillas, a few scoops of raisins, about one cup of oats, and surprisingly, about two cups of uncooked brown rice. But everything else is gone.

Breakfast. This was one of my favorite meals of the 30 days, I think! A very simple meal but extremely satisfying and tasty! The usual oatmeal with raisins, seasoned with what else but the savory and versatile season-all. Two breakfast taquitos composed of one scrambled egg, re-fried beans and brown rice wrapped in lightly canola-oil basted corn tortillas, seasoned and baked at 500F/260C for 8 minutes. It's amazing to me what you can do with taquitos and tostadas. ▼

Lunch. A simple variation of fried rice with carrots and cabbage, this time just threw on a plain omelette on top. It's little tricks like this that keep your brain fooled into thinking your're getting variety when in fact it's just the same ingredients rearranged. Nutritionists will tell you that one of the keys to healthy eating is variety. So that's why it's so important to strive for these little variations if you're going to try the 30 day challenge. ▼

Celebratory Day 30 Dinner. I went all out. I used up the last portion of the final potato, the remainder of the pasta sauce, and had enough tortillas to make three taquitos! It felt like a lot of food! So this was the potato, ramen and penne pasta combo, plus a taquito variation including my very last ration of beans, a bit of brown rice and... chopped carrots for a nice twist on consistency! It was a really nice final meal! Prepared with love... ▼

Thank you. Thank you for following along. Thank you for being a voice for those who have no voice. Thank you for giving even when you may have thought you can't afford to give and did it anyway. Thank you for overcoming your indifference to explore my thoughts and my challenges to your thinking. Thank you for deciding to join in on the movement to overcome indifference, so that together we might make a real difference. Thank you.

Take Action! Yes, the challenge is over, but let's not stop here!

1) Please consider giving toward scholarships for children of the Indian slums. There will always be a need for this. 

2) Please visit my unofficial sponsor, Amazon.com through this link. 7% of your purchases made through the link are given to Peace Gospel. If you're in the UK, use this link.

3) Awareness is half the battle. Stay aware and join in on the conversation by sharing our news and photos with your friends. Follow along on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Flickr and on Instagram (@peacegospel)!

day 29: finish line in sight!

Today was another amazing day of seeing people from all over the world coming together to do something to make a difference in overcoming extreme poverty. I've been again blown away by your response to my rallying cry of "let's go!"

I've seen Facebook shares, tweets and instagram mentions cascading out across the world, and donations coming in again as small as $5 from complete strangers. I'm humbled and grateful for your support, but more importantly it's children like this girl who are grateful for your care, for standing up to speak up on her behalf. I'm dedicating day 29 to her. What does she see? There is pain in her eyes and she's seen things no child should have seen at her age. With your help, this is the kind of child we're working to rescue from child labor.

A side note: Today on our Facebook page someone asked a typical question, understandably, "What about the poor right in our own back yards? Shouldn't we help them first before tackling these bigger issues?" And I thought, many of you dropping in on this blog only recently might have the same question on your mind. I would like to invite you to go back to my day 14 post which discusses the difference between poverty and extreme poverty in the developing world.

I think that many who ask this question just innocently do not comprehend the type of squalor that these children are living in, and how they're forced to live and work in hazardous conditions. It's not that homeless people in the developed world don't need our help--obviously, they do--it's just that the scale and depth of the poverty crisis in the developing world is so much more intense. And with such an intensity, I propose it's going to take that much more of an intense effort to attack it as a global community.

We cannot just ignore the cries of these children because we live in another country that has its own problems. As if our loyalty to one country vs. another has any weight in the argument of how you respond--it just does not really hold up to logic very well when we're dealing with human suffering, in my opinion. There's simply too much of an imbalance in the world economy to expect that anything's going to get done in the developing world on its own.

On to the good news! Just today, we received $1,675 in several smaller to medium sized donations! It's a picture of everyone coming together to do their small part to make a difference! Those of you who've been following along from the beginning will remember one of the mantras I came up with on this challenge: "Together wecan make a difference, if we overcome indifference!" That's what's happening through this movement!

So we're now up to a total of $9,080 raised! That's enough to bring in 18 children off of our wait list, out of child labor, and into The Children's Hope Center in Hyderabad, India! This is amazing and so emboldening to me that we've seen this level of response.

Let's keep going! You can make a difference! Chip in what you can, even if you feel it won't make a difference--trust me, it will make an impact! Just $920 to go by midnight of day 30 (tomorrow) before we must reach my second goal of 10 more scholarships--a total of 20 children we can bring out of the trash heaps, clean them up, get them ready for school, and watch the look in their eyes transformed from desperation to that of hope! Like these kids who are already enrolled at the center:

On to the recap of what I was able to come up with for $1 of food today. Rations are holding steady and I continue to find variety from the small list of ingredients I have on hand.

Breakfast. I need a little variety on the oatmeal front, so I tried carrots with the raisins again, which is nice, but for the first time that I can recall, I tried mixing in scrambled eggs, and it worked! Really a nice texture and it paired well! All for about 30 cents, very satisfying start to the day. ▼

Lunch. A slightly new variation on the tostada recipe--re-fried beans, brown rice, potato and chopped cabbage. I'm really surprised at how well these work and the variety of taste they can provide. ▼

Dinner. Inspired by a recent visit to Seoul, South Korea, I tried the sunny-side up egg on top of my fried noodle rice dish! The yolk breaks and becomes like a sauce in the fried rice, and this was absolutely delicious and satisfying. Hard to believe it only cost about 33 cents to make this! ▼

Barefoot update. Not much to report, we've got it so easy here in the States. I don't really have to walk anywhere hazardous except for a few rough spots, and some hot pavement. So that's why I have not written much about it. But my feet are definitely feeling sore some days on longer walks and looking pretty beat up. Here I'm standing near a symbolic finish line!

 Take Action!

1) Please consider giving toward scholarships for children of the Indian slums. We surpassed our initial goal of $5,000 to cover 10 scholarships, but I want to keep going to see if we can reach 20! Every little bit helps! We're almost there!

2) Please visit my unofficial sponsor, Amazon.com through this link. 7% of your purchases made through the link are given to Peace Gospel. If you're in the UK, use this link.

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!

day 28: we're doing this!

In response to yesterday's appeal to give this one final push, you all went crazy and started the uprising. I love you, and these kids love you. My favorite donation today was a $5 gift. God bless you, sister. That right there, a $5 donation says loud and clear to me, "I can't do much, but dang it, I'm going to do something." If only everyone could say that, there would be no poverty in the world. But sadly, most shrug their shoulders and walk on down the dark tunnel of indifference and defeatism.

Thanks to our collective voice raising awareness across the internet, we raised a total of $1,880 today! This brings our total up to $7,405--enough to cover 14 scholarships for children of the Indian slums, and just $95 short of what we need for the 15th scholarship. This is stunningly incredible news and I'm absolutely humbled by your support toward our mutual goal--to see these kids rescued from a life of child labor in the trash heaps. Through our united effort, we're literally removing kids from circumstances like that seen in my photo below, from the slums of Hyderabad, India. This is a colony that sits right on top of one of the city's trash dumps.

I feel the momentum, and I don't believe it's going to stop here. With your continued support, I think we can take this up to 20 scholarships in the next 48 hours! Let's go! We just need $2,595!

For those of you joining the blog late, let me give you a quick run-down on what it is we're trying to do here. I'm living on $30 of food (total, one grocery run for $30) for 30 days, all the while going barefoot, so that I can try to empathize with some aspects of the struggle of the slum dwellers of the developing world. They're known to live on only about $1 a day, and most go barefoot due to their extreme poverty.

My goal is to raise awareness, and from this, raise funds for our (Peace Gospel International's) children's slum outreach center, "The Children's Hope Center" in Hyderabad, India. Hyderabad is India's fourth largest city at 8 million residents, and over 1,400 slum colonies. For $500, we're able to bring a child out of a child labor situation (convincing their parents or guardians that it's better for us to enroll them in school and cover most of their living expenses than for any meager benefit they would receive from putting their child to work).

At The Children's Hope Center, we equip them with everything they need to enroll in one of the local schools we've partnered with--we give them uniforms, new shoes (their first pair ever), backpacks, school supplies, hygiene supplies (most do not own toothbrushes), and then after school they come to the center for tutoring and computer literacy classes! They also receive healthy snacks and one fresh-cooked meal per day. If any medical conditions arise, we treat those too. All together, for $500, we're able to equip one of these children for everything they need to succeed in school and to stay healthy. Here's a picture of what this "fruit" looks like:

So, what do you think? Are you in? Let's do this! Spread the word, please share this blog on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, wherever and however you can. We've got 48 hours to come up with $2,595 to bring our total up to 20 children rescued from child labor and enrolled into The Children's Hope Center! Any amount makes a difference! Please donate any amount, seriously-- $1, $5, $10--whatever you can afford, it's all adding up, just look at this total again: $7,405 in 28 days!

I've already informed our team in India of this great news (they're following along on the blog as well), and just today our they were busy at work informing families of the children on our wait list that their kids are going to be able to go to school this year! I've already started receiving some of the photos of these new kids and I cannot wait to share them with you on day 30!

On to the recap of what I was able to cook up for $1 today. Thanks to your incredible support, I continue to find inspiration to remain creative with the few ingredients I have to work with. All rations are holding steady, and in fact, I've got more than I need thanks to being conservative on the front end of the challenge! 

Breakfast. The tostada is still working wonders for me. Here, a breakfast variation with re-fried beans, brown rice and one scrambled egg, seasoned with pepper and season-all. Delicious, seriously. With the standard oatmeal and raisins, it really helps you make it to lunch. ▼

Lunch. If I could just brag a little bit here, I was really excited with the outcome of this one. I've saved up a few extra corn tortillas so I splurged with 3 taquitos today. On a brainstorm, I took a gamble on spooning a raw beaten egg into the taquitos before baking. Ingredients were re-fried beans, brown rice, chopped carrots and the raw beaten egg rolled into canola-oil basted corn tortillas. If you'd like to try this, be sure to microwave the tortillas before preparing so that they're pliant and won't crumble upon rolling. Turn them over, seam-side down and place in the oven at 500F/260C for 8 minutes. The corn tortillas ended up absorbing the egg to create an amazing texture and flavor unique to the past 28 days. With some extra pasta sauce I've been rationing, I was able to create a pizza flavor by topping them with the sauce and seasonings. I bring you... "taquito pizza rolls"--cost, about 10 cents per taquito! ▼

Dinner. Nothing as fancy as lunch, but some delicious noodle fried rice with chopped cabbage. You can't go wrong with this as long as you prepare with the right amount of pepper and seasonings. Satisfying, for about 33 cents!

Take Action!

1) Please consider giving toward scholarships for children of the Indian slums. We surpassed our initial goal of $5,000 to cover 10 scholarships, but I want to keep going to see if we can reach 20! Every little bit helps!

2) Please visit my unofficial sponsor, Amazon.com through this link. 7% of your purchases made through the link are given to Peace Gospel. If you're in the UK, use this link.

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!

day 27: just one more?

Well, today we made it to 11 scholarships, with our total coming up to $5,525 raised as a result of this blog! This is really great news and I'm so shocked we've come this far! I continue to be grateful for all of your support, whether it be simply by visiting the blog and keeping in touch, through giving financially, sharing my blog with friends or the recipe suggestions--it's all made a huge difference and there's no way that these 11 kids would ever have a chance of gaining hope without you.

But tonight I ask the question--if we all come together and give it one final push, can we raise funds for at least one more? What about for a girl like her? What do we do about her? Now I want you to keep in mind, I don't usually post unhappy photos like this. You can visit our Flickr stream to see that my usual approach is to show the fruit of our work in the smiles, the end result of our work, rather than the despair. However for some reason on my own blog I've felt more released to just show you what I've seen. These are all my own personal images, just documenting what I've seen, to share with you and the world the reality that's out there right now, today.

So that's my simple appeal for tonight--with everyone chipping in what they can, I'm confident we can reach at least another $475 to bring in the next child to The Children's Hope Center in  Hyderabad, India. Even if you can only give $1, $5 or $10, please do it. It will make a difference.

If you're joining the blog late, let me tell you a little about our slum outreach in Hyderabad. It's an education center that facilitates every aspect for getting a child out of child labor situations--usually that of scavenging through the trash heaps of the slums looking for recyclables--and into school. We've partnered with some local schools where we send the kids. But we provide everything they need to succeed in school--uniforms, shoes, school supplies, fresh cooked meals, and medical attention when needed. In addition to that, we have full time staff at the center who help the children with their homework and tutoring when they come back after school. They also get a computer education at the computer lab at the center.

What's more is the facility is currently undergoing a complete overhaul and expansion. Also, a clean water well is being installed to save money on the children's drinking water supply, and to share the water with the slum community--many of the illnesses of the children in the slum colony where we operate the center are a result of water-borne diseases. So, all of that to say, a lot of progress is being made at the center, thanks to your support! Here's a real picture of that progress--a smile on the face of one of our newest students!

Personal update. Just nine more meals to prepare! This has been an incredible journey, learning more than I've learned on the previous challenges and really surprising myself all over again with what can be done with so little. Some rationing surprises again--turns out I have two eggs every day for the next 3 days, several more tortillas than I had calculated, and a bit extra oatmeal still remains. But running very thin on beans and pasta. In short, thanks to being conservative on the front end, I think I'm going to make it without any major shortages. My feet are starting to look pretty nasty but I'm trying my best to take care of them. I've lost weight, 8 lbs (3.6 kgs) as of a few days ago. All things considered, I'm hanging in there.

Breakfast. Standard oatmeal and raisins seasoned with season-all. Yes I like my oatmeal savory, try it! Tostada variation--re-fried beans, rice and chopped carrots. Not getting tired of tostadas at all! ▼

Lunch. Egg fried rice with cooked ramen noodles, fresh chopped carrots and cabbage. With the right touch of pepper and seasonings, this is an amazing and very fresh little dish that can really hold you over. All for about 33 cents! ▼

Dinner. I had another egg to use for today, so I hard boiled one to chop up for the tostadas. With boiled potatoes, re-fried beans and brown rice, this was a great new variety of tostadas! Bought a little paprika from my existing stock and it added a nice twist on the usual seasonings. Overall a really great meal, considering it only cost about 30 cents to make! ▼

Midnight snack. I needed a little boost to write the blog tonight, and I had a little extra oatmeal and raisins stored up from my ration plan, so I came up with a sort of vegan oatmeal raisin cookie. Just a splash of canola oil, half-teaspoon of sugar, teaspoon of flour, a splash of hot water, mixed together and baked at 450F/230C for 12 minutes. Perfect!

Take Action!

1) Please consider giving toward my goal to donate scholarships for children of the Indian slums. We surpassed our initial goal of $5,000 to cover 10 scholarships, but I want to keep going to see how many more scholarships we can come up with! Every little bit helps!

2) Please visit my unofficial sponsor, Amazon.com through this link. 7% of your purchases made through the link are given to Peace Gospel. If you're in the UK, use this link.

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!

day 26: home stretch

Although my meals today were enough to keep me going, it was a hard day and I don't have a lot of energy to write tonight, so bear with me. However, overall I'm extremely encouraged and I'm on the home stretch now--just 4 more days to go!

I'm dedicating day 26 to this girl in the slums of Hyderabad, who holds a sign in English which reads, "I am beggar, not eating food." This is in one of the city's estimated 1,400 slum colonies composed of make-shift tents constructed from sticks, tarps, vinyl banners, palm branches--anything they can find to try to keep the rain out--as seen behind her. This one colony in particular is right in the midst of a trash dump on Medak road.

I really felt like what I wrote yesterday (day 25) sums up everything I would want to say tonight, so between the photo above and what I wrote yesterday, I'm going to let it rest at that. Please go back and read my thoughts if you missed out.

A great fundraising update tonight. Again we received several smaller donations that added up to $250, bringing us to a total of $5,475! So we're just $25 shy of an 11th scholarship! You could be the person that makes that difference to bring us up over the top of the goal for the 11th child to come out of a life of child labor and into The Children's Hope Center. Donate whatever you can afford--it will make a difference!

And I don't want us to stop with 11! Let's keep going! You all are doing a remarkable job of spreading the word and I appreciate every tweet, facebook post and instagram shout-out you all continue to provide for this campaign. Keep it up, let's go! We can do this--we can continue to bring these treasures out of the trash heaps!

On to the recap of what I was able to come up with for $1 today. Getting more challenging to think of variations, but thanks to a recommendation from a comment on the blog last night, I got a couple of new ideas.

Breakfast. The photo was out of focus (as were my eyes at this point, probably) but what you're seeing is a tostada with a bit of a new variation--no re-fried beans, just brown rice and one scrambled egg, seasoned. Usual oatmeal with raisins. The tostada is still my current favorite. There's just something about baking the corn tortilla with seasoning that provides an amazing base and strong texture for the meal. ▼

Lunch. Thanks to the comment on the blog from Tabitha last night, I tried cooking some carrots with raisins and a few dashes of cinnamon, and it was similar to the flavor of sweet potatoes. Very nice addition to the variety list. Also really enjoyed a tostada with re-fried beans, brown rice and one chopped hard-boiled egg. Super delicious. It was double egg day! ▼

Dinner. I don't know which day it was I didn't use one of my rations of ramen noodles, but tonight I discovered that I had an extra 1/3 of a brick of noodles! As I was really hungry, this was unbelievable news! So I created a pasta/ramen noodle fried rice dish that was very generous in portion, all things considered. With a batch of homemade corn tortilla chips, this was a solid little meal. ▼

Take Action!

1) Please consider giving toward my goal to donate scholarships for children of the Indian slums. We surpassed our initial goal of $5,000 to cover 10 scholarships, but I want to keep going to see how many more scholarships we can come up with! Every little bit helps!

2) Please visit my unofficial sponsor, Amazon.com through this link. 7% of your purchases made through the link are given to Peace Gospel. If you're in the UK, use this link.

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!

day 25: the power of encouragement

I'm dedicating day 25 to this brother and sister I met in the slums of Chennai. Their squatter's home had just been bulldozed by the police. All that remained of their previous make-shift shanty lay in the few scraps you see in the background behind them. Look at the little girl's smile. In one way she's smiling at me, but in a stronger sense, I feel she's smiling because she knows her brother is looking out for her.

Some days I think we all feel like the little girl in this photo. Alone, we're weak, but with someone's arm around us, with that sense of encouragement from others, we get a smile, and we can press on. We can overcome the most dire of circumstances to rise above the despair.

Here he is explaining to us what had just happened. Apparently we had missed the act only by a few moments. You can see the shock in his face as he tries to make us understand--"my home, where I was sleeping just last night, it's now gone, in one minute!" I'll never forget this.

Back to the little girl getting the encouragement from an arm around her. I wanted to share a tangible example. If I were trying to live on $1 of food per day, and it was just me, no blog, no community of support, I would really be struggling to make it. But because of your encouragement, I have a huge advantage.

I'm just convinced that everyone needs encouragement--something, some catalyst to take you from despair to hope, from hope to a determination that you're going to make it, and from a sense of "I'm going to make it" to a creative, almost entrepreneurial drive that allows you to overcome in ways that are beyond anything you could have imagined.

This past 25 days has been just that. I've really surprised myself with what I've been able to come up with in terms of variety and satisfaction from these past 75 meals. And I attribute it all to those of you who've been cheering me on. You see, I believe we're all created to be a light to others, to shine on others' darkness in some way or another. It's just a matter of whether we're going to let that light shine, or keep it to ourselves.

Where you might have guessed I'm going with this... to another real-world example, which is much more poignant than mine. These children in the slums. They have no reason to possess hope. Their identity is that of the untouchable, the slum dweller, the trash-heap scavenger. There's no hope, there's no future for them. But I'm here to testify to the fact that there can be hope. I've seen it in the eyes of these children at The Children's Hope Center--how appropriately named! Here's a picture of that hope in their eyes:

In the same sense, the kids of this education center are getting an arm of support around them. They're thinking, with their new shoes, school uniforms and first-ever school supplies fitting snugly on their backs in their new backpacks... "Wow, I'm going to school? So this is what it feels like to wear a uniform and shoes!" And they're getting some sense of "Hey, I've got a chance at this!"

This glimmer of hope becomes a little light within them. If appropriately fanned through encouragement from teachers and peers, it becomes a fire of passion within them, to overcome, to be creative, to someday start their own business, or learn a special skill they never would have had the vision to believe they could master.

It's beautiful when you think about it. One flame to another, lights going out into the darkness. Will you let yours shine? Will you extend your candle of hope to another in darkness? Or will you just hide it in your own little world of indifference?

Today, I was incredibly encouraged. We received some smaller donations that added up to $125. Why am I so encouraged about this? Because now our total is up to $5,225--10 new children of the slums have received scholarships and are in the process of being enrolled at the Hope Center, and we only need $275 to bring in one more. Will you be a part of helping me get the next child enrolled? You can donate any amount here, and I'm here to tell you that it will make a difference.

On to what I was able to cook up with just $1 today, thanks to your support, encouragement and wonderful recipe suggestions!

Breakfast. Was in a hurry this morning and had to simply throw together a quick batch of oatmeal and raisins, seasoned with none other than my favorite, season-all. It's really good on oatmeal--try it! I think it's partly the conditioning of the past 25 days, but surprisingly, this held me over nicely until lunch. ▼

Lunch. This was my masterpiece of sorts, I'll be honest, I'm kind of proud of this one. Again, a tostada variation, but with fresh chopped carrots and a chopped hard-boiled egg on top of the re-fried bean and brown rice base: this was over-the-top sensational for a meal that cost about 30 cents to make! The kicker--you ready for this? My kids asked me to make these for dinner (from the family stock, not mine, thankfully), and they all loved it and asked for seconds! Yessss! Fist-pump! I'm already thinking about a 30 days on $30, family edition! Hahaa!! Hope my wife's not reading this. ▼

Dinner. Ok, nothing to write home about here, except for one little "rationing victory" story. As you might have noticed (really? I don't expect it, lol), I have not made soup the past two days. So, as a result, I saved up an entire ramen seasoning pack for use in tonight's soup. (It's the little things!) Usually, I would have split the packet up between soups and other dishes across three days. So tonight I had a minestrone-style soup with the added kick of a full packet of "spicy chicken" flavor ramen seasoning--a flavor with a lot of kick to it! As far as soups go, definitely nothing gourmet about it--but it was tasty and it filled me up! Mission accomplished: day 25... done! ▼

Take Action!

1) Please consider giving toward my goal of 10 scholarships for children of the Indian slums. We surpassed our initial goal of $5,000 to cover 10 scholarships, but I want to keep going to see how many more scholarships we can come up with! Every little bit helps!

2) Please visit my unofficial sponsor, Amazon.com through this link. 7% of your purchases made through the link are given to Peace Gospel. If you're in the UK, use this link.

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!