Meet my friend in Venezuela & help us feed and clothe people in need in these troubling times.

Hey Again, Steemitizens!

Fair warning, this is a long story, and it ends in a humble fundraising request, but before you skip it, please take a couple of minutes, you might end up helping my friend Reny and I change some actual people's dismal situation at least for a brief moment, in Venezuela in a very tangible way!

I'd like to introduce you all to an amazing friend I've made here on the steem block chain and tell you about a project we are doing together to provide food, clothing and shoes to as many disadvantaged people as we can in the economically ravaged country of Venezuela.

This story begins by spanning the continents of North and South America.

A month or so ago, a young man came into the PAL Network/Minnow Support Project Discord chat where I hang out a lot and offered to make personalized graphics for people for free, as a means of making new friends and introducing himself to the community he had just arrived in on his first day in the chat room.

That selfless act was unusual to say the least, and I was intrigued so I asked him to make a post about it and resteemed that for him, with some modest success. He made some new friends, and I gained a ton of immediate respect for this kind gesture on his behalf.

I went on to get to know him a little better, and the more I learned about this fine young man with a giant heart, I really came to be quite impressed by him.

Now I call him a genuine friend, made right here on the block chain and in the related community chat rooms and we've shared more and more about our completely different lives.

Meet my friend Reny Ochoa from San cristobal, Tachira, Venezuela!
Follow Reny at
http://steemit.com/@malos10

Reny is a young man just 19 years old, who tells me he feels more like 28, and I, an old man nearly 50, would have to agree based on his maturity, well spoken demeanor and kind heart.

We would normally have little in common. We come from worlds apart, from completely different cultures, with three decades between us on top of all that.

Yet we found common ground in a single word.

"Arepa"

Arepa (Spanish pronunciation: [aˈɾepa]) is a type of food made of ground maize dough or cooked flour prominent in the cuisine of Colombia and Venezuela, and also popular in Panama and Ecuador. The Timoto-Cuicas are credited with having invented the arepa.

It is eaten daily in those countries and can be served with accompaniments such as cuajada (fermented milk) or avocado, or split to make sandwiches. Sizes, maize types, and added ingredients vary its preparation. Arepas can also be found in Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Trinidad and Tobago and the Canary Islands. It is similar in shape to the Mexican gordita and the Salvadoran pupusa.

[source: wikipedia]

I have had them in a small authentic Latin-American restaurant near an office I used to work at in Miami Florida, and one day while talking about the economic crash in Venezuela with Reny, he mentioned them and I remembered enjoying them fondly the few times I've been lucky enough to have them.

This lead to me asking if Reny and his family had food, and he confided they were luckier than most to have a few days worth at a time, but that times were indeed very hard for them.

I sent him a few dollars, and told him to get some groceries and didn't think much about it. The cost of a modest fast-food lunch here in the United States at most. He wrote back, and had given the money to his father for food, which he proudly reported had made his dad very happy with him, and that they had bought several days worth of food, and in turn I got a really good set of feelz for the experience.

He told me he hoped to be able to return the favor and I told him to find ways to help others around him as a means of "paying it forward" and that was that... or so I thought.

This was a nice way for us to bond and our friendship continued. And let me tell you this kid, kept blowing my mind. He is a photographer and an athlete specializing in the hobby of Parkour or "city running" which is incredibly difficult and requires strength, stamina and a positive, strong mindset that is quite unlike that required of most other sports.

Here is the photo he showed me of himself that absolutely blew my mind. I skydive, I jump out of perfectly good airplanes, but I do that with the benefit of a parachute! This, on the other hand, seemed absolutely insane. Then he calmly explained that he trained at great length and could easily hang from such a bar for many minutes thus making the 30 second photo opportunity a piece of cake by comparison.

He also said, no one should try that without the years of practice and training he had done, but for him, it was actually quite easy.

Sure kid, I still think you are totally nuts to do that without a parachute though!

Well, we kept in touch and enjoyed our chats, encouraging each other on new posts and discussing our lives and wins and losses as the weeks went on, Reny had hurt his foot badly just before we met and had some time to recover so he was on steemit a lot at first, and we kept checking in now and then, often discussing his progress until he finally healed enough to be back on both feet and get outside again. As these things happen, some time eventually began to pass between our discussions as life on steemit took us in different directions for a while.

Last night I was thinking about him and had a few dollars in my account so I sent it to him, randomly and unannounced just to encourage him a little in what I knew were tough times for his family and him. Again, a small gesture that mostly made me feel good about myself more than anything.

The whole thing was more selfish than selfless in my own mind, as I was having a terrible night of my own for personal reasons but I had been focused on service recently on Monday Night Minnow School and had actually been discussing and teaching how acts of service can actually make you feel better about your own conditions.

So I tried it. I sent something like $7SBD to Reny, felt a little better about my own situation as a result and went to bed.

Today I heard from Reny, and of course he was thanking me for the unexpected gift. But it was what happened next that blew my mind. He started telling me something amazing and sending me photos of himself and something he too was quite proud of.

Here they are and they tell the story all on their own:

I asked him a million questions about the experience and we spent the afternoon talking about how we could work together to do even more. I am hardly a rich man, often late on my own bills and not always eating like I should myself, but I am still in far better shape than the people of Venezuela and I immediately wanted to get in on helping these people with Reny as much as I could, so we devised a plan.

As I create this post, Reny is completing his own versions documenting his food service to the poor and disadvantaged people around his city in both English and Spanish. He has video and photos to add to these shared here and you can see those posts at these links:

Reny's post in English

Reny's post in Spanish

I took this quick, really crappy photo of myself (don't hate me because I'm not pretty!) with one of Reny's pictures on my screen in the background, sent it to him in our chat to show him and I together and told him I wanted to help and to be a part of his mission.

I asked if I could make a post as well (this one you are reading now) with the idea that I would donate the proceeds plus $200 SBD I have coming from some very unusually well received recent posts of my own which kind of went moderately viral after interviewing @TimCliff on my Monday Night Minnow School radio show on MSP Waves Radio.

Since the topic of that show was "helping" and the prior week's show topic was "service", I already knew I wanted to do some sort of service work to help people somehow with the proceeds of those posts, as it is the mission statement of the radio to station to help others whenever and wherever possible and these amazingly unexpectedly high post rewards were going to something like this no matter what.

I pledged the $200 SBD I have coming in from those show posts to Reny for him to use however he could in his community. He responded by saying look at that one man, he has no shoes! "I want to give him a shoe!" Haha, I giggle, and quickly typed back, "Buy him both shoes!" and we shared a laugh as he responded of course man, you know it! JaJa/Haha we both laughed in our native typed tongue. But then we got serious and worked out this campaign.

For all the money on this post, plus $200 SBD of my own funds, I will send this money to Reny. He and his brother will cook and prepare food, gather used clothing and shoes and get busy distributing them over the coming weeks. Since he was able to feed about 20 people with fresh homemade Arepa for about 10SBD, we know that 200+ SBD will go a long way indeed and will take a couple of weeks to transpire.

My only requirement was that he uses it in the best way possible to maximize the number of people he can help in the best ways possible, be that food, or clothing or as he suggested he might even be able to help some get some medical attention they need at his local hospital. Apparently a couple hundred SBD will go a very long way on the ground in the current economic conditions of ravaged Venezuela today.

So that's the plan. I would never overtly ask for a vote or a resteem on one of my usual, personal posts, but this time, it's not for me, it's for the humans in need in another country, and so with all due humility and respect, I would this time beg, if you are ever going to resteem or vote on one of my posts, let it please be this one.

Don't do this for for my sake or Reny's directly, though both you and I and he will benefit from the healthy side effects of feeling good about it, but rather, for the people like the ones in the photos above, who have so little and need just a bit more than that to get by for another day.

We can make a difference. One person at a time. I hope this story touches your heart like it has touched mine.

And thank you!

Just like that, this post is over.

Full steem ahead, steemitizens!
@sircork

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