The Answer is Always Yes

Every family has an origin story. Ours began when Daphne was six or seven years old and someone gave her a stationery set, complete with pretend stamps. Around that time, Daphne first learned of the persecution of Jews and Christians in the Soviet Union. In her childish hand, riddled with spelling mistakes, she began writing letters “to the Russian leaders.” Let the Jewish people go, she implored. Let the Christians go.

Of course, Daphne had no idea how letters reached governments. She knew nothing of addresses, embassies, or consulates. She simply sealed each letter in an envelope, attached her pretend stamp, and proudly dropped it in the mailbox. 

Thinking this would teach her an early lesson about being “careful,” one adult warned Daphne that “if you keep writing those letters, the Russians will come and get you.” Undeterred, she gathered every remaining sheet of paper, every envelope, and every stamp. In the biggest letters she could write, she scrawled across each one: LET THEM GO! 

She mailed every single one.

We are not a Jewish family, and though Daphne did not know the word then, we believe that was our family’s first Hinenimoment—the fearless response of a child. Etched into her heart, that childish determination became a simple, wholehearted “yes.” Over time, that “yes” became the defining response of our family and, later, of our organization. 

There was nothing remarkable about our beginnings. We were a homeless single-parent family, overcoming day to day, with no ambition beyond our own survival and no vision beyond our own community. Then, one Sunday, while Daphne was sitting quietly in church, an American woman approached her and invited her to speak at a church in the United States.  

We had never travelled internationally, had no experience, and certainly no resources. Plenty of nights we went to sleep not knowing how we would find the money to manage through the following day. But the answer was Hineni. Daphne would step on the stage, speak from the heart, and invite people to discover their purpose and calling in life. We would simply say “yes” and discover along the way whether the impossible was, in fact, possible.

That single response opened a door that has never really closed. Taking us where we would never naturally have gone, leading us to people we would never have met, and bringing us to more than forty nations, that “yes” has placed us in life-threatening danger. We have faced terrorist threats in Indonesia, police raids in Malaysia, hijack attempts in Hong Kong and Côte d’Ivoire, machete attacks, wars, and other dangerous situations. Yet, that “yes” has also brought more blessing and purpose into our lives than we could ever have imagined. Eventually becoming the very heartbeat of our family and our organization—Generation 2 Generation—that “yes” inspired our goal of raising a generation that will discover its own Hineni as a lifelong response.

When a tsunami ravaged Southeast Asia in December 2004, we gathered a team and traveled within days to Thailand to help clear the devastation and rescue the local communities whose lives had been shattered. We built a base of operations where hundreds of volunteers would fly into help, provide medical services and food, and help restore and provide new boats to kickstart the local economy. When Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans in August 2005, we went immediately to clear homes that had been under water, mobilizing some of the volunteers we trained in Thailand to provide food and supplies to struggling families. When the United States withdrew from Afghanistan and thousands of local men and women targeted by the Taliban desperately sought to escape from what they described as a seemingly impossible situation, Andrew worked to test the boundaries of the impossible and helped rescue more than 300 people. When we learned of the horrific plague of human trafficking devastating vulnerable women, Daniella, Daphne’s daughter and Andrew’s sister, began faithfully traveling into some of Thailand’s darkest corners, helping rescue girls who had become trapped there.

What we have learned from willingly entering the places most people do everything in their power to avoid, is that we cannot control the outcome, only our response. Today, that response is no longer a whisper. It has become our declaration.

Then came the greatest test of that commitment. On October 7, 2023, while many governments around the world were frantically organizing evacuation flights to bring their citizens home from Israel, we were determined to move in the opposite direction: instead of fleeing from danger, we ran toward it. Our response was immediate. “Comfort, comfort My people.” No money for our flights? We would find it. War? That did not change our answer. Less than two weeks after the massacre, our first team of volunteers landed in Israel. Hineni had carried us this far. We saw no reason to answer differently now.

Since then, we have mobilized seven teams to serve throughout the country. Whether walking the streets of Jerusalem simply to stand alongside the people of Israel, volunteering on farms in the Golan Heights, cooking for young soldiers at Gilat Junction, comforting grieving children and elderly survivors, or showing up wherever we were needed, we have carried with us one simple message: “You are not alone.” Though not Jewish, in this age of growing anti-Semitism, we have chosen to stand with our Jewish brothers and sisters with even greater conviction.

People sometimes ask how we manage to be so brave. The truth is that we are not. We are ordinary, fragile people. We wrestle with fears, distractions, weaknesses, and competing priorities just like anyone else. And yet, for us, not coming to people’s aid would have been harder. Not saying Hineni would have been far more difficult than saying it. 

Hineni is not a ritual, but a reminder of who we are. Every time we say it, that response becomes a little more deeply woven into our lives. Wherever we are needed, we will be there.

Because here we are.

Hinenu.