Guiding Vision

This lazy Sunday afternoon I thought I’d browse through the rest of the Bloggers Unite, Acts of Kindness posts. Here are my favorites from the second half of the entries:

1. Sharani chose 9 Simple Acts of Kindness for December and later wrote a follow-up about the unexpected outcomes
2. Marvia highlights Acts Of Kindness In Colon, Panama and how kindness is a way of life
3. Connie sent craft supplies to China for a group of preschoolers
4. Nneka suggests 25 ideas for acts of kindness
5. Tony supports KIVA a site that provides microloans to people starting a business
6. Mary at Becoming Your Stellar Self volunteers at a local hospital providing Reiki to people with cancer, as well as their spouses and caregivers.

Bloggers Unite is a group writing project sponsored by Blog Catalog. According to the website:

Bloggers Unite is an initiative designed to harness the power of the blogosphere to make the world a better place. By challenging bloggers to blog about a particular social cause on a single day, a single voice can be joined with thousands of others to help make a real positive difference.

The topic this past Monday was Acts of Kindness. I entered my post on delivering angel tree gifts. Since then I’ve been browsing through the LONG list of all the entries. I’m only about half way through the list, but thought I’d recognize a few my favorites so far, in no particular order:

1. In The Beaming Faces of The Tiny Tots one blogger shares a personal story of giving away items to others.
2. Build Community highlights simple acts of kindness we can give and receive while doing our everyday shopping.
3. In The Kindness of Strangers a group of neighbors help an elderly man during the dead of winter.
4. Two children innocently show their family’s need for help in Random Acts of Kindness Should Last All Year Long.
5. Here’s another great post about Angel Trees at LifePrints.

Each year our church hosts a Salvation Army Angel Tree. This year our tree had 132 angels and church members picked their angels very quickly. In fact I didn’t even get a chance to choose one this time! Instead I volunteered to help sort and transport all of the wrapped gifts to the Salvation Army depot.

I met with the other members of our missions committee last Friday. It was a joy to see all of the gifts that had been brought for the kids. The church office was overflowing with gifts and many more were in the sanctuary beneath our main Christmas tree.

Mike, who has organized the Angel Tree project for several years, had his clipboard in hand checking off names and gifts to make sure that all of the angel sponsors had brought their gifts in. I started calling out the angel numbers from the tags on the presents and he would check them off. This made the checking process go pretty quickly.

At one point our chruch’s grand pipe organ which was just a few feet away, suddenly started playing. That startled us to say the least and I had to yell for awhile to be heard over it. That organ can be very LOUD, especially as in this instance when our organist Kiyo and his wife Chiemi are both playing. Of course when they stopped playing I was still yelling for a moment.

As I was checking the packages I noticed how some of the children would be getting several presents from their angel sponsor. I imagined the children’s faces as they open the gifts on Christmas morning.

Troy and Kyle started loading up the packages that had been checked off into the trailer. When all the packages were accounted for I joined them in finishing up. We drove over to the warehouse that was housing all of the Salvation Army gifts and unloaded them. Now those gifts, lovingly selected and wrapped, along with all the other special presents await delivery to the little angels.

Spending just a couple of hours on the Angel Tree really helped me get into the Christmas spirit!

This post is part of the Bloggers Unite project.

Marc Gold and those working with him on the 100 Friends Project continue to make a direct impact in the lives of people living in developing countries. Often a few dollars, or even a rusty old bike, can make a difference.

People living in a village near the airport in Jakarta (Indonesia) gather recyclable items and exchange them for money. Everyday they search for things that they can turn in such as plastic bags, bottles, cans, metal, and wire. In the past they had to walk and carry the items to the brokers. Most people were able to collect enough recyclable material to earn about $1 per day.

With help from the community committees in the area volunteers obtained 100 bikes and fitted them with large baskets. They distributed the bikes to the families in the village. Now with the bikes and baskets they can take more recyclables and they can do so much faster.

Marc said that with these bikes their “income goes from about $1 per day to about $3 per day and that is really significant for them.”

It is hard to imagine even living on $3 per day when thinking of it in US value. However to put this in perspective in Indonesia the average yearly income is $3843 US (2005).

This year 100 Friends has worked on many other great projects. In Cambodia they distributed hundreds of mosquito nets that could protect up to 1000 people from malaria and dengue fever. They support orphanages in several countries and are even building a school in Afghanistan. The 100 Friends Project 2007 Field Report describes the other activities from the past year. Whether it’s bikes, medical supplies or just a dollar or two to a family in need, 100 Friends continues to do good all across the globe.