After a difficult birth and hard labour, Karen gave birth to a beautiful girl. Later, the midwife cleans the baby and gives it to her mother, who weeping looked at her and gave her a kiss on the forehead, then Karen dies. The midwife gives the little baby girl to her aunt who will take care of her; they call her Ana and she will grow up as an orphan since Karen’s husband died months before his daughter was born from a sudden heart attack.
Thousands of miles away Jose's parents, a boy who is only two years old, die in a train wreck.
Three years after these events they are sent to the orphanage, a place where they grow up and where they finally meet. They become great friends as they share their dreams of leaving the orphanage and work to be able to have a family, a home and a prosperous life… Everything that had been taken away from them.
Many times Jose would talk to Ana about some remote and flashing memories of his parents, Ana never knew his own, but from some old photos that she kept with her, she would imagine what would it be like to be with them; at night, the two young kids would let their imagination run wild as they made up in their minds wonderful experiences with their parents, but in these thoughts reality always arose and they felt that sad and an anguished void for the loss and the unfortunate helplessness of lacking the love of a mother and a father. Then they both would cry as they tried to comfort each other.
As time passed by the two teenagers fall in love and leave the orphanage already made man and woman without wasting time in marrying each other. They live in difficult times for their country and they find it really hard to get a job and a house; they are hungry and cold, but they are always together. Jose said that he would go down with Ana to hell if necessary, that he would never leave her… It was a deep and sincere love that both professed to each other, a true love.
With much effort they managed to improve their situation and after a while they get a house. Then Ana gets pregnant and after nine months she gives birth to a male child who they call Hristo since Ana and José are christians. The faith along with their love was what helped them go through hard and difficult times.
Hristo is a healthy and strong child. His parents educate him with values and principles that his son would always have in life, they tell him about all the vicissitudes and hardships they had to go through being orphans and above all they teach him to value work and friendship. Hristo grows very fast, as fast as his humility and good heart; it’s not been easy for his family and he has seen how his parents have gotten through really difficult situations.
Hristo becomes a man and begins to work in a construction company, there he notices how he wastes materials that can be reused, Hristo's witty mind makes up many ideas: to be able to take certain rubbish and use it to make new pieces that could be useful. He was a very enterprising man. After a short time he becomes independent and sets up his own company; he has a conception of the order and the cleaning of the surroundings of the cities that leads him to expand his company to the remodeling and parks. Hristo believes in ecology and sees the world from a holistic point of view.
Due of the education and love of his parents, Hristo believes in a better world in which all people have homes and a decent work. He thinks that this world is not utopian and that with effort and constancy that can be achieved, but above all he has faith in his fellows and believes that the key to be happy is to help others. There laid the teachings of his parents, something that Hristo began to understand even better as he matured and became man.
One day while at work Hristo watched a boy who worked on his construction business being scolded by a foreman, this annoyed Hristo very much; he approached and rebuked his supervisor, then he watched the boy and realized that he was quite thin, "Are you hungry?" he asked, the boy who nodded like a penitent. Then both men went out to eat, and there the young man confessed that he had barely got the job done the day before and that he had nowhere to sleep. A feeling of sorrow invaded Hristo and in his heart something began to flood that distressed him abruptly; he remembered his parents and thought that these things could not happen, so Hristo without much thought sheltered the young man, Hristo perceived kindness and suffering in him, he needed a home, a father, a mother, a family.
In this way this noble man began to look for homeless people and helped them to have a better life, he gave shelter to those in need and founded a special house for all of them. Hristo never forgot the teachings of his parents, he never lost faith. “To be happy it is necessary to help other people”, Hristo always said. People and his business partners never understood why a man so prosperous was dedicated to philanthropy, he did it directly, looking for those in need, getting to know them and searching for what made them suffer as he tried to make their painful memories go away or at least teach them to bear the burden.
There are few Hristos in the world, but surely there are; I'm sure everyone knows someone, perhaps not with the resources of Hristo, but with their own faith and goodness in their heart.
Source of Second Image