A Guest Blog Post by Chad Houck

As 2009’s final weeks and days pass, I find myself at what has often in the past been a difficult season.  It’s that season where I evaluate my past year, perhaps contemplate setting some new lofty goals, and maybe even lay out a few new practices that I’d like to implement into my life.  About every third year or so, I been known to buy a gym membership that I later fail to utilize and try to get out of come March.  That’s right, New Years and its accompanying resolutions are right around the corner.

Personally, thanks to the lessons I’ve learned over the past year of my life, I plan to approach this New Year a bit differently.  I won’t be setting any earth shatteringly high bars to leap over.  I likely won’t even set any “resolutions” at all, save one -  to begin.

You see, I’ve come to realize that the primary reason I’ve failed to achieve certain goals or to take advantage of certain opportunities that I’ve encountered may not have had anything to do with the difficulty of the final objective.  In fact, probably more often than not, the things I either wanted or needed to do weren’t even that difficult.  I just never got the ball rolling.  I simply failed to begin to do something.

Lately, however, I’ve come to realize just how far you can go in the 365 days following that all-important first step.

Perhaps there is no better example of this than a young friend of mine from Arizona named Austin.

Austin Gutwein

If you met him today, you’d likely be amazed at by how humble this remarkably influential young man is.  At a surprisingly young age, he is directly responsible for the development of 2 clinics and a high school in Zambia, Africa, as well as additional projects in Kenya and Swaziland.  In 2007, the organization that he founded (at the age of 11) provided bicycles and World Vision’s AIDS caregiver kits to 250 indigenous AIDS caregivers in Sinazongwe, Zambia.  For Austin, 2009 will be remembered as the year that his organization crossed the $1,000,000 mark in funding for AIDS orphans in Sub-Saharan Africa.  Oh, and also as the year that he turned 15.

Austin Gutwein didn’t set out to build the world’s largest basketball free-throw shoot-a-thon. In 2004, after watching a World Vision video about AIDS orphans in Africa, he realized that these were children just like him.  He felt that God was calling him to do something to help them, so on World AIDS day, with his friends and family sponsoring him, 9 year-old Austin shot 2,057 free throws, one for each child that would be orphaned by AIDS during his typical school day.  As his father Daniel counted the shots, Austin’s solo effort raised just over $3000 that day.   More importantly, however, it was the beginning of Hoops of Hope.

Austin will be the first to tell you that he had no idea where those initial shots would lead.  The following year he was joined on the court by several friends and collectively they raised over $35,000, supporting and caring for 100 orphans.  2006 saw the first school built in Zambia, providing 1,000 children the opportunity to envision a future with an education – But it never would have continued if it hadn’t begun.

Occasionally we see an opportunity before us but we fail to respond. Perhaps we think that one irrelevant person, one insignificant compliment, or one inconsequential donation won’t really matter.  We trivialize our participation as volunteers in our communities, as mentors in the lives of others, or as donors to a cause we believe in, because we don’t think we have the qualifications, credentials, or capacity to REALLY make a difference.  In doing so, we negate the impact we could have had and the change we could have brought forth if we had simply been willing to take that all-important first step… to begin.

Today, in Sub-Saharan Africa, there is an entire community of young people whose paths have been irreversibly altered, possibly even rescued from the curse of AIDS that is systematically killing their generation. They have been impacted by the choice of one solitary nine year old that had the courage to believe he could make a difference, and by the lives of every single individual that has hosted, shot at, sponsored a shooter, or attended a Hoops Of Hope event since.

So what is YOUR plan this new year? Whatever your dreams may be, when you wake up on the morning of January 1, 2010, my prayer for you is that you take advantage of the opportunity to begin.

Chad Houck is the director of Share5.  Along with his wife and two children, he has spent the last 14 months living in a 35’ motorhome, traveling the United States sharing their lives and their hearts with people and communities in need.  You can learn more about them at their website at http://share5.org.  Chad will be releasing his first book, “Share Well With Others” in early 2010.  It was begun in January of 2009.

Austin Gutwein’s Hoops of Hope shoot-a-thons now take place across the United States and in China, Pakistan, Qatar, Canada, Korea, and Portugal.  Austin is currently touring on the Revolve Tour and is launching his own “AllStars Festival” 12 city Tour in 2010.  You can find tour schedules as well as Austin’s new book, “Take Your Best Shot”, on his website at http://HoopsofHope.org