Friday's Kind Words: Wonderful, Thoughtful, Healing, Teaching
We wanted to thank you for several years of wonderful, thoughtful, healing, teaching and encouraging stories. We have three girls (Nora 7, Madeline 5 and Lidia 3) and your stories are the highlight of each week. They have gotten us through so many 8 hour car rides with minimal whining and fighting! More than that, they teach important principles and character traits that are so hard to understand as children.
We have been working to cultivate a culture of service in our home and as a family, we decided on a "summer service project" where we would collect cans and bottles to redeem to help raise money to pay for heart surgeries for children in war-torn regions and ISIS relief to children and families in Iraq. At first, it was a struggle. Doing work for which you don't "get paid" is tough! But one morning, we were talking about why we were doing this. Madeline was born with a heart defect and needed heart surgery or she would have died. We had so much help to get her the surgery she needed and we wanted to do the same thing for another family. Nora said, "Hey! That's just like Martin and Sylvia's 'Pay it Forward'!" So we re-listened to the episode (which I had never heard - it's great!) and the girls were filled with renewed inspiration!
We decided to start a website so our family and friends who lived out-of-town could donate and the girls helped me design it and came up with the title "Paying it Forward: Garbage for Life!" ;-) (you can see it here:https://www.purecharity.com/paying-it-forward-garbage-for-life ). Every time the girls feel tired, one of them reminds them, "we're paying it forward like Martin and Sylvia!" So far they've collected nearly 2000 cans and bottles! Thank you for helping make our parenting job easier and for inspiring a generation where an attitude of kindness, love and service are the norm. You are such a blessing to the world.
Thank you, thank you, thank you!
Kristin and Nick Giuliani, with Nora, Madeline and Lidia
