Jesus “saw a man blind from birth. And his disciples asked him, ‘Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?’ Jesus answered, ‘It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him’” (John 9:1-3).

On May 22, 2011, a multiple-vortex EF5 tornado ripped up Joplin, Mo., leaving 149 corpses and a city of rubble in its wake. The following July, I spent three days there as a volunteer. I wasn’t sure what one woman could do without muscle or power tools, and honestly it didn’t seem like much. The first day I picked up trash on a couple of city streets, but the next two days I confronted piles of used clothing, canned goods, and stuffed toys to pick through. It felt like one of those fairy tales where the heroine has one night to sort a pile of rice and barley into separate bins.

FARMINGTON, N.M.—The first time Taylor Benally made a snappy remark to his house parents, they silently pumped fists. Making snippy comebacks isn’t extraordinary teenage behavior, but it was a milestone for the 13-year-old Taylor. Like most other kids at Four Corners Home for Children, a childcare program mostly for Navajos in Farmington, N.M., Taylor came from a dysfunctional family. When he first arrived at Four Corners in 2013, the boy was so reserved and insecure that any time he showed signs of self-assertion, everyone cheered.

KALISPELL, Mont.—A 19-year-old girl with a nose ring and hair pulled tight into a ponytail walks into a waiting room, carrying a car seat. A gaggle of women swarms her. She lifts a blue-eyed, fair-haired baby out of the car seat, and the oohs and aahs turn into laughter.

“Sorry we bombarded you,” one nurse says. “You saved her life,” the young mother replies, looking down at her baby. “So I owe it to you guys.”

CHISAMBA, Zambia—On a windy Sunday morning at the Village of Hope—a 230-acre orphan village located 30 miles north of Zambia’s capital, Lusaka—dozens of children and a few adults gathered for worship at the VOH community center, which was surrounded by tall grass, pathways muddy from weeks of rainfall, and other brick buildings.

MANCHESTER, N.H.—Children’s laughter bouncing off the walls: New Life Home has that sound, and typical long-term drug recovery programs don’t. A shy, smiling 2-year-old runs around the white clapboard home with peanut butter on his chin: His mother had escaped a gang and planned to abort him before meeting a New Life graduate. The mom is now a graduate of the program and became a Christian in the process.

GREENWOOD, Miss.—Our Hope Awards Southeast Region winner is Delta Streets Academy (DSA), a 5-year-old Christian school in Greenwood, Miss. You might wonder why: Hundreds of Christian schools exist south of the Mason-Dixon Line and east of the Mississippi. Some, born in the 1960s, are not five years but five decades old. So why spotlight a relative newcomer?