When Pete Kadens was just 8 years old, he saw “an intense amount of poverty.”  What he saw impacted his life.  “I just kind of literally made the decision at that moment that I was going to do something about it,” Kadens told Fox News.  “I didn't know how that would manifest, of course, but it was a life ambition.”

Now Kadens is making an impact.

Having retired from a thriving career at age 40 in 2018, Kadens has devoted himself to transforming the lives of families stricken by poverty.  He believes that transformation can occur by helping impoverished people get an education.

In 2019 Kadens took a part-time teaching job at Noble Johnson College Prep, a public school in Chicago, in order to better understand the plight of the students.  “I wanted to be someone who really understood the problem and understood it through the lens of the folks who were suffering through those problems and challenges," he said.  Every Friday for three hours, Kadens taught a class of 21 juniors and seniors, all of whom lived below the poverty line.  He taught them about morality, business, entrepreneurship, and life.  These students became the inspiration for his philanthropy.

In February of this year, Kadens’ non-profit, Hope Chicago, awarded debt-free college scholarships to thousands of students at five public high schools in Chicago, including students at Noble Johnson.

Kadens, with the help of other donors, is also providing debt-free scholarships to one of the parents or guardians of each of the scholarship-receiving high school students.  His goal is to award 30,000 scholarships to college and vocational programs over the next 10 years for students and their parents in Chicago. *

God looks upon the human condition of spiritual poverty and it breaks His heart.  We are victims of our own sinful choices.  Yet, God loves us and decided to make an eternal difference in each of our lives.

God became flesh and lived among us (John 1:14) so that we may know that He knows about our plight, and He cares.  He cared so much that Jesus, the Son of God, went to the cross and died for us.  He paid the price for our redemption from sin.  “In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace” (Ephesians 1:7).

God will save and give eternal life to those who place their faith and trust in Jesus (Acts 16:30-31), turn from their sins in repentance (Acts 17:30-31), confess Jesus before men (Romans 10:9-10), and are baptized (immersed) into Christ for the forgiveness of sins (Acts 2:38).  He will continue to cleanse from sin those who continue to walk in the light of His Word (1 John 1:7-9).

When we were lost and without hope, Jesus came and made possible a transformation that will last for eternity.  We can experience that life-changing transformation if only we will submit our lives to Him in trusting obedience.

Won’t YOU?

-- David A. Sargent

* Information gleaned from “Illinois philanthropist awards debt-free college scholarships to students and their parents” by Danielle Genovese of Fox News, www.foxnews.com.

David A. Sargent, Minister

Church of Christ at Creekwood 
1901 Schillinger Rd. S.
Mobile, Alabama  36695

Archived issues of Living Water can be viewed and accessed from our website at: www.creekwoodcc.org