What could be more honoring to a mother than supporting and protecting her and her children? Here are three amazing stories of people who know how to treat the mothers around us with the respect, courage, and support they deserve.

Pregnant Mother Was Starving in Gaza. After Relocation, She Gave Birth to Triplets

Jason Jones is the founder and president of the Vulnerable People Project (VPP), an organization that evacuates and temporarily resettles some of the world’s most vulnerable people. The ministry has evacuated, protected, and aided people in countries around the world, including Afghanistan, Nigeria, Sudan, and Ukraine. Recently, amid reports of incredible needs and horrific circumstances, Jones received an encouraging report. A woman they’d helped had given birth — to triplets!

This story of hope comes from bleak circumstances.

“The average Gazan right now has 245 calories a day,” he said. “This is the most rapid onset of famine in modern history.”

When Jones first heard about a Gazan woman named Samar, she was literally starving. Her organs were failing — and she was in her seventh month of pregnancy with what were believed to be twins. She spent three days at the Egyptian border, hoping to cross, before sympathetic border guards let her through. A relief organization with which VPP partners was able to evacuate her and her large family to Egypt, but with 18 people living in a one-bedroom apartment, it was too crowded to be sustainable.

“We got them livable housing,” Jones said. “We got her top-notch healthcare. And just this week, days before Mother’s Day, Samar gave birth not to twins, but triplets.”

Hero Saves Baby from Burning Building

Last Monday, John Stickovich, 62, was on his way to work in Cleveland, Ohio, when he saw smoke pouring out of a house. A woman holding a child was sitting outside on the lawn. He stopped to ask if she was okay.

The woman said, “My baby’s still in the house.”

So Stickovich leapt into action. He kicked in a side door, but the fire was too intense there. Then he crawled through a back door, but couldn’t find the child. He went back outside to ask the woman where the 11-month old was. “Next to the kitchen by the baby gate,” she told him.

So back in he went, crawling underneath the smoke. He reached the gate, but couldn’t see the baby. He was about to leave again when he heard the baby make a sound.

“I’m thinking to myself, ‘The baby is right here,’ so I just lurched forward and my arm went across his leg,” Stickovich told Fox 8. “I grabbed him by the leg, [pulled] and then we were both out.”

Firefighters believe the baby would have died without Stickovich’s efforts, the outlet reported.

“I feel wonderful that I could save the baby. That mother doesn’t have to mourn her baby. That baby gets to live today,” Stickovich said.

Mississippi Pastor and His Wife Offer Free Ultrasounds

In the nearly half a century that Joseph Parker and his wife, Birdie, have been pastoring churches in the Mississippi Delta region, they’ve seen an immense need for pro-life ministry among the communities they’ve served.

“Some of the poorest people in the state live in the Mississippi Delta,” Parker told The Stream.

The Parkers began thinking about pro-life ministry a decade ago. “I saw needs and really wanted someone else to start a pregnancy ministry because I didn’t foresee that as something I was really in a position to do,” he said. “There was talk, but nothing was really happening.”

Then, about seven years ago, the Parkers felt the Lord was clearly saying to them, “You do it.”

So they started a nonprofit organization and raised $191,000 to buy a mobile medical pregnancy clinic, in cash — “miraculously,” Parker says. Though they had already begun serving women as they were able, the couple drove their unit from Ohio to its Mississippi home October 2022 and were fully up and running by this January. Through their mobile clinic they’re able to provide ultrasounds, pregnancy tests, diapers, clothes, and other donated baby items — all free for the moms they serve. They also refer mothers to other ministries in an effort to help meet any needs they may have.

One mother said she needed help paying her rent. “Our goal is to prayerfully say, ‘Lord, help us to help this mom,’” Parker said. “The Lord provided a ministry that does help in this way, and we were able to connect her with that ministry.”

Parker believes most average churches should probably have a pro-life committee or a way to support pro-life ministries in their communities. “Too many people who love the Lord are way too laid back about about the fact that we live in a culture that thinks it’s okay to murder babies,” he said.

Correction: An earlier version of this article said the Parkers got their mobile pregnancy unit last October. They got it in October 2022.

Aliya Kuykendall is a staff writer and proofreader for The Stream. You can follow her on X @AliyaKuykendall and follow The Stream @Streamdotorg.