I can still picture him at the orphanage where he was just one of over 100 kids. He was 2 years old, covered in dirt, wearing a tattered T-shirt too big for his body. He wasn’t wearing a diaper, his nose was running, and no one seemed to care. His mother had brought him and his older brother to live at that orphanage, believing anyone else could give them a better life. It wasn’t because she didn’t love them—she must have felt inadequate to mother them. And so I imagine as she left Johnny and Peterson there, she gave them each a kiss on the cheek and felt both pain and hope in her heart for their future.

He is noticed in the crowd due to the number of hot dogs he manages to shovel into his mouth. Eight hot dogs. But it isn’t the hot dogs that sparks attention, it is the fact that this boy is hungry. This boy needs to be fed. This day, he leaves the incredibly impoverished village he has called home for most of his life and begins a new journey, one that is still weaving redemption and light into his story.