Stories of Kindness from Around the World

A Priceless Bar Of Chocolate

I am a volunteer Kids Church teacher every Sunday. In spite of my work and shool activities I committed to this time so I could talk with the children, inspire them, and help them realize that they're worth it. The time spent with them blesses me as well!   One time I arrived late and, to my suprise, found the kids were not in the classroom. I told them I wasn't happy about that. I explained that the ministry is not about me but about God. It's God's grace and faithfulness that should inspire them to attend and not me.   After the one hour lesson and talking to them from my heart I was suprised again. They waited behind after class to give me something. It was a bar of chocolate!   I got all teary-eyed! I hugged them and said how happy they had made me and how much I enjoyed having them in ... Read Full Story >>

Real Kindness On A Kenyan Street

  When I was about 6 years old I lived in Kenya. There was a lot of poverty and there were always street children on the roads asking for money.  There was such a big divide between those children and me and I grew up very aware of being so fortunate.    We had a wonderful and very kind driver, John, who had been working with my family for decades. He used to take us to and from school. One day we had to take a detour on the way to school and whilst we were stopped in traffic a young street child, probably no more than 10 years old, called out with a friendly greeting. “Jambo, John!”     He approached the car and shook John’s hand. John then gave him a little bit of money and waved him off with a smile before we carried on our way to school.   I had watched the whole ... Read Full Story >>

Putting My Mother's Teaching Into Practice

This weekend I went clothes shopping. While I was looking through the garments I would put the ones I wanted to try on across my arm. 

Then a lady who worked in the shop approached me. She appeared to be about the same age as my grandmother. She said, "Hello. May I please have your items so I can set up a dressing room for you?” 

I looked at her with gratitude and said, “No thank you." She insisted and I told her that if my mother were to see me hand her my clothes for her to prepare a room for me she would ask where I had left my manners. She smiled and said, “You have a good mother,” and left to go help another customer. 

When I was done trying on the clothes she asked me to give them to her so that she could hang them back up; but I knew where I had found everything so I returned them myself. 

Before I left the store she said to me, “Thank you for being considerate. I’m very tired today."

I was glad I had put my mother's teaching into practice.

In Her Time Of Greatest Need

  I used to work in a hospital as a Pharmacy Technician. As part of our duties we would make rounds of all the nursing stations to pick up orders deliver medication, etc.    On one of my rounds I met an elderly lady. She was sitting outside a room crying. People walked past and saw her crying but nobody offered to help. I stopped and asked if she was okay. She said her husband was in the room - dying.     I asked if I could call anyone or do anything for her but she said she didn't have any family near-by and they never had any kids. So, I just sat there a while, holding her hand and listening to her.    This went on for weeks, me listening and hugging, and her waiting and crying.    Well one day on my rounds I saw her sitting there, not crying. So, I went to sit with ... Read Full Story >>

Yes Martha, There IS an Easter Bunny

Some time ago,  I was shopping at my town's local St. Vincent de Paul Store.  As I was shopping, inspiration struck.  I saw they had several bags of plastic Easter eggs, so I bought most of them.  Later I went to various stores and bought about 20 bags of candy.  I then put a few pieces of candy in each Easter egg along with a smile card or a small inspirational note.  I filled up two duffle bags with hundreds of these eggs. 

Today, a friend of mine and I went around our city putting eggs on people's cars.  It turns out that one of the cars we left an egg on turned out to be someone my sister knows.  This person had mentioned on facebook how someone had left a plastic egg on her car and she was going to pass on the kindness herself and even print some smile cards.  This made my day.  Hopefully we made a lot of people smile!

Company of a Stranger On The Dangerous Walk Home

  When I was a little girl my family lived in what is now part of a forest preserve.    Our bus stop was about a mile from our house and in the afternoons we often walked home through the woods or down the highway. The woods were safer but in the winter the build up of snow made the trek very difficult. So, I often had no option but to walk the desolate stretch of highway that ran by our long driveway.   When I was in high school I took the highway home one winter's day and a man drove by. Now it wasn't unusual for all manner of creeps to bother me as I walked and I always felt very tense when I had to do it.    Instantly I knew this man was trouble! I pretended to look straight ahead. He drove down the highway, turned around drove past me again. Then he ... Read Full Story >>

To Doxie, With Love And Gratitude

  I met the most amazing person a few years ago. She has a wonderfuloutlook on life and she believes in the city of Detroit, even though many others have given up on.     My friend started an organization called Burners Without Borders and she focuses her efforts on helping the homeless in Detroit and the surrounding areas.    Every winter my husband and I help her with the Back-Pack Project. We fill back-packs with canned food, socks, gloves, hats, water, granola bars, a blanket. etc., and we give them to homeless people that we see on the streets.     People warn me that I could get hurt doing this but I don't feel in danger. I feel that these people are grateful and surprised that anyone cares. I am not reckless about it, I use common sense, but feel safe doing it that way.   Doing this simple thing for people has changed my life. I ... Read Full Story >>

A Journey Of Love

No matter how much money I don’t have, I always try to think positive. Sometimes, I hate it when I start thinking about money because it brings me down, makes me sad how others have more, and are doing more. When I was younger, I always wondered why money was so important, there wasn’t anything I needed. It’s good to be kid, not having to worry about responsibilities. But as everyone gets older, of course that changes. I work almost everyday, but it’s still not enough, that’s what is frustrating - it’s never enough. Right now I have to sacrifice the money I make. I put my school on hold so that I can pay for my girlfriend's school, paying for tuition and everything else. I’m very supportive because in everything I do, she is also very supportive, we are each other’s number one fan. Helping her really puts everything ... Read Full Story >>

A Wedding Dress Moment At Check-in

 My step-daughter left the U.K. for the U.S.A. yesterday. Because she is planning to start a new life there deciding what to take and what to leave was really difficult!

Most of the clothes she left will be packaged up and sent to help poor communities in Romania. Even so, she still had a lot to fit into her baggage allowance.

Arriving at the airport check-in she already knew one bag was over the weight limit. She had £40, about $75, in her hand to pay the excess.

Talking to the woman behind the check-in my step-daughter explained that the bag contained her wedding dress and shoes. She was going to America to marry her sweetheart.

"Is that so?" The woman smiled at her - and waved her on through with no charge for excess baggage!

What a beautiful start to an exciting journey. I pray her marriage has many such moments of random kindness!

A Mighty Effort For Might Max

After hearing about “Mighty” Max Low who is a 12-year-old boy with Leukemia I couldn’t help but get right in behind helping him and his family.     Max has been fighting with Leukemia for half his life and his big wish is to receive a million get well cards. It is his dream!   The sixth-grader was diagnosed with leukemia in kindergarten. Instead of letting the ailment get him down, in 2004, he and a friend thought of a cool way to pass the time while bedridden - get people to write him get well cards.    They set a goal of 1 million cards and while the word initially spread like wildfire the campaign began to peter out at the 24,000 card mark.   His story touched my heart and I longed to help him. I thought to myself, I can't just sit here. Let's set this wildfire off again and make his dream come true!   Firstly ... Read Full Story >>

The Mud in My Car

Two months ago, I was driving my new car for the first time.  As fate would have it, it started raining very hard.

A few blocks later, I came by a bus stop. Standing there was a young woman who was being drenched. She had no umbrella and all her belongings were wet as well. To make matters worse, she had mud on her shoes. But, like we all know, the universe is funny. The light turned red, causing me to stop directly in front of the young lady, so I rolled the window down and screamed over the thundering rain for her to get in. She was hesitant because she didn’t want to get my car wet and dirty. Nevertheless, I insisted, and she got in.

Twenty minutes later, I dropped her off at her destination. My car was dirty and muddy and needed to be taken to the car wash to have the mud removed from the rugs. But I was glad to pay for the service because I had made a big deposit into my personal bank account for random acts of kindness ... and that by far was more rewarding than having a clean new car!

Using Kindness to Hush the Noise Downstairs

  Several years ago my young daughter and I moved into the upstairs apartment where we now live. While my loving, wonderful friends helped me move in, the downstairs neighbors began to complain about the noise. That did not bode well for living above them. After all, how can anyone move in  quietly?   As I suspected, the complaints continued on a daily basis -- well after that initial day. We walked "too loudly" down the stairs, we flushed the toilet too much ... Their child had problems with my child and they complained to me as well.   I soon learned that they had driven out the last few families who had lived above them and that each situation had erupted into feuds and yelling. So, I had the information I needed and I tried to think of the situation from a spiritual point of view. I realized that I could fight with my ... Read Full Story >>

Sharing My Birthday With A Stranger

High Five Nottingham

A friend and I decided that the city of Nottingham, England, needed some cheering up. So, we hit the streets armed only with a camera, a high-five t-shirt we made that morning, smiles and plenty of enthusiasm.

We spent all day High fiving the general public and put smiles on a lot of people faces!

check it out here :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZkMKp4QrGeg

enjoy! <3

high five!

Customer's Gift To An Employee

My husband and I have always been friendly with the clerks at the local convenience store where we often get gasoline. I don't think people appreciate what a difficult job these folks have sometimes. They work for a little over minimum wage and I often wonder how they make ends meet. One of the clerks, "Charlie," was missing her glasses one day. I commented on it and she said they'd been broken and that she couldn't afford a new pair. It was obvious that she was having a difficult time. We wondered how we could help, so turned to our own eye doctor for assistance with a plan. We had his secretary contact her, asking her to come in for an eye exam free of charge.  We told the doctor to let her order whatever glasses she wanted and that we would pay for them. Although Charlie questioned what was going on, ... Read Full Story >>

Tuning 'Possessions' Into Inventory to Share

Ever since my new laptop arrived, I held on to my older one thinking it would serve me some day. In the last few months, every time I opened the closet and saw it, I felt depressed. Here was a perfectly good laptop gathering dust, and I had turned it into inventory. Cutting-edge inventory control systems encourage us to shed our inventory because it  takes up space without creating any value. :)  I got the chance to change that a few days back, when we had a visitor who was having a crummy time in life. After helping this friend with ideas on how to start a massage business and spread the word,  I suggested, "You need to get out there on the Internet and set up your homepage." My friend replied, "For that, I need a good machine. My machine is so slow that I can't really do anything on it." ... Read Full Story >>

Leading The Blind

  I work in a major department store as a cashier. My area has four cash registers grouped in a square and I am not supposed to leave the immediate area unless it is to straighten clothing on the tables right next to my work station.   Yesterday, I was the only one working on the registers. I was straightening clothes up when these two ladies approached me. One had a walking frame with wheels and the other was holding her arm. When they got close to me, I could see that the lady with the walker was totally blind.    They asked me how to get back to the Mall from my store. I pointed and said, "Just go that way."    The next thing I knew they were headed in a totally wrong direction. I called to them and said, "Hello, you are going the wrong way!" They turned around and came back towards me. ... Read Full Story >>

A Gas Station Gift I Couldn't Afford

Just recently, there was a man standing near the islands in the gas station when I pulled in. I had recognized him from before, when I saw him trying to cross 4 lanes of traffic with crutches. He still had his crutches with him. When I got out of the car he politely asked me if he could pump my gas. I said, no thank you and continued on. I started to notice he asked other people the same question, and I realized he was doing it for money, but he wasn't getting any. As I looked at him, he seemed genuinely worn out and running low on energy. As I passed by him to go inside, he smiled and commented on how hot it was. I agreed, and asked him if he had walked here. He said yes, he is trying to get donations to be able to keep ... Read Full Story >>

Giving A Family The Gift Of Christmas

When In Trouble ... Give!

Today was the day that I paid my bills. I was feeling a little under the weather financially and worrying myself about it. I was praying and thinking about the problem when, just like that, I got the solution. I’m a firm believer in the concept of “a blessing given is a blessing received.” So I went to the grocery store to do an act of kindness.  Since I wanted to do this act anonymously, I couldn't figure out the right person for a long time.   Finally, I went in line behind the person that I wanted to pay it forward to. When the cashier rang her items up I handed my debit card over and asked the cashier to charge it on me. The lady in line was confused at first, but I explained to her the whole concept of paying it forward and even told her about HelpOthers.org. ... Read Full Story >>