Our History

This is the story of Live 2 Give Hope

Long before Live 2 Give Hope had a building, it had a name.

For 32 years, John Angst preached at Prosperine Baptist Church in Eldridge, the kind of place where baptisms happen in the river and neighbors understand what it means to take care of one another. Somewhere along the way, a group of young people were given something simple to do. Mow a yard for someone who couldn’t. Cut firewood before the cold came. Show up before anyone had to ask.

He called the group Live 2 Give.

Years later, that same spirit found its next chapter in his daughter Laura. After a season of running, of chasing titles and validation across thirty-three countries, Laura came home to Lebanon and got licensed for respite foster care. Her first call came at nine o’clock at night, for a three-month-old baby girl who arrived with nothing but a diaper bag full of socks.

She turned her spare bedroom into a closet, stocked with every size of diaper and clothing she could find, so no foster parent would have to run to Walmart alone at midnight. A trip to visit a friend’s Community Closet in Tennessee confirmed what she already suspected: this was the answer.

The family carved out space in the back of their storefront and called it the Fostering Hope Closet. Within six months, it took over half the store. In 2021, a grant made it possible to expand into a space of its own, and Laura closed her business to run it full time.

What started as one closet in the back of a store, rooted in a church group from Eldridge decades earlier, has grown into Live 2 Give Hope: a ministry built on the belief that no family should walk alone, and that this work was never meant to be done by one family in isolation. It was always meant to be done in community.