ALONGSIDE HOPE FALLL APPEAL

DEAR FRIENDS IN CHRIST,

When I was a boy, I asked my father what our family name meant. He told me that Jenkins meant "kin of John."

I remember trying to imagine who this original John was, what he looked like, and whether or not he was a caveman. Years later historians took the wind out of my sails by giving a different answer: the name actually means something closer to "little John." My father's answer is the one that has stayed with me. And I have come to think he did not go far enough. We are kin of a great many more than just John (whoever he was!).

The words kin and kind grow from the same root. Kind first meant natural, belonging to one's own family, and kindness grew out of the affection relatives naturally feel for one another. Over the centuries that feeling stretched to include anyone at all. Scripture has always drawn the circle that wide: "From one ancestor he made all nations to inhabit the whole earth" (Acts 17:26).

It is natural to care for our own: our family, our parish, our town, our country. The Gospel does not ask us to love them any less. It asks us to notice how far "our own" actually reaches.

That is the spirit in which Alongside Hope works. Your gifts travel through partners who live where the work happens: churches, health workers, farmers' groups, and community organizations who know their neighbours far better than we could from a distance. They set the direction; we walk beside them. This past year, that meant work in 28 countries. So think of what follows as news from the family.

In Madagascar, midwives who once delivered babies at night by the light of their phones now have Solar Suitcases on the clinic wall, powering lights, fetal monitors, and phone chargers. In Kenya, 660 women received chicks to start poultry businesses of their own. In Tanzania, nearly 20,000 fruit trees have been planted for refugee families, and in the Nyarugusu camp, community-run nurseries are growing seedlings for vegetable gardens. In Zimbabwe, solar-powered boreholes now pump clean water for families and their cattle. In Gaza, your gifts helped Al Ahli Hospital, run by our fellow Anglicans in the Episcopal Diocese of Jerusalem, give emergency care to more than 6,000 patients.

Closer to home, 144 Mi'kmaw cultural items are being prepared for their return from the Smithsonian Institution to Nova Scotia. There is much more, from Ecuador to Winnipeg, in the Annual Report at www.alongsidehope.org.

In Afghanistan, a couple named Ghulam and Sabira received help to buy food through the Resilience Fund. They said: "For the first time in years, my children went to bed with full stomachs. It may sound like a small thing, but for us, it is everything." Anyone who has ever put a child to bed knows exactly what that means. That recognition, across all the distance between us, is what kinship feels like.

One project has held our attention across the diocese this year: St. Luke's Hospital in Nablus, also run by the Diocese of Jerusalem, family in the plainest church sense. It serves about 455,000 people in 57 villages and four refugee camps. Alongside Hope set out to fund 407 solar panels to keep its operating rooms, incubators, and oxygen machines running through frequent power cuts. Thanks to your generosity, and a donor who matched gifts dollar for dollar, that goal is now within reach.

Jesus put it simply: "Just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me" (Matthew 25:40, NRSV).

This fall, Alongside Hope Huron invites you to give. Your gift supports all the work you have just read about, and more besides. Cheques can be made payable to Alongside Hope and mailed to 80 Hayden Street, 3rd floor, Toronto, ON M4Y 3G2. You may also give online at www.alongsidehope.org/give-today, or by phone at 1-866-308-7973. If a little each month suits you better, consider becoming a Partner in Hope.

Even the word generous belongs to this family of words. It first meant "of noble birth," belonging to a good family. We might say that when we give, we are simply showing which Family we belong to.

"I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth takes its name" (Ephesians 3:14-15). May we live as the one family God has made us.

Thank you for your prayers, which matter as much as your gifts, and for standing with our kin near and far.

In Christ,

Rev. Canon Dr. Greg Jenkins, on behalf of Alongside Hope Huron