Hope Runs by Claire Diaz-Ortiz & Samuel Ikua Gachagua

"Hope Runs" by Claire Diaz-Ortiz and Samuel Ikua Gachagua is the story of an African boy named Sammy who is opened up to a world of possibilities through the orphanage matrons God places in his life, and also through two unlikely heroes: Claire Diaz-Ortiz and Lara Vogel. Claire and Lara are travelers. Throughout their early 20's, they rarely stay in one place for too long. They visit Alaska, Mexico, Italy, and many other places before they end up in Africa, where they will eventually end up spending an entire year and then visiting many times after.

When Claire and Lara meet Sammy, he is a 15 year old boy who has already lived at the Imani Children's Home for several years. His father died when he was just a small boy, and his mother struggled to make ends meet. Finally, one day when he was about 9 years old, Sammy's mother left and never came back leaving Sammy and his older brother, Muriithi to care for their 4 year old sister Bethi. Bethi eventually was taken in by family, but the boys were sent to an orphanage as their family did not have enough food for all of them.

Claire and Lara quickly form a bond with Sammy and see something extraordinary in him. They find a way for him to finish his high school years in America, and somehow become his guardians even though they don't live anywhere near him. It is under somewhat strange circumstances as Claire and Lara are not old enough to adopt him themselves, but yet they are responsible for him as mother figures.

To me, Claire and Lara seem like such an unlikely pair of friends. Claire is a Christian. Lara is not. In a way, I feel like this could be very confusing to Sammy as he does not understand how a lot of things work. The girls have to teach him many things about life as he is understandably somewhat naive.

Another thing I thought was really interesting were the differences between Claire and Sammy's cultures. You really don't have any idea how different they act and think until you hear them speak from their point of view. For instance, Claire once asked Sammy in front of a group of people if he was in the 8th grade. Of course Claire didn't mean anything by what she said, but to Sammy it was highly offensive. To him and the other 9th grade boys in their culture it meant that he was immature and not yet a man.

Another interesting difference occurred when Claire and Lara brought over 100 pair of shoes for the students so that they could get involved in running. Many of the orphans were grateful for what the girls had done, but many of them refused their shoes because they felt those shoes were not the best and they wanted to have the best with what little they did have. To you and I, we may think that sounds crazy. They have so little. Shouldn't they be thankful for what they have? It is just another one of the differences between our cultures. They view things differently and may not be able to express all of those reasons in ways we understand.

All in all, I really enjoyed this book and afterwards I found myself thinking about it often and asking myself questions. Wondering why certain events turned out the way they did, or what motivated some of the girls' choices. It was truly an inspirational read that I would recommend. There wasn't an incredible amount of spiritual content as I would have expected, and I wondered if that had something to do with Lara not being a Christian, but I could be wrong. The book also ends with Sammy returning to Kenya. I will be curious to hear more about him in the future to see what God has in store for him.

I rate this book as 5 stars. I received this book for free from Revell, a division of Baker Publishing Group in exchange for my honest unbiased opinion.