29 Gifts.com

Visit 29-Day Giving Challenge


I came across this site, 29 Gifts.Com and I was challenged to to try it out. In this times of financial crunching ourselves, it has been a challenge to think of others who are more needy.

My cousin, R and I, had breakfast in Manila before I left. We discussed thinking and serving others as a way to widen our perspectives and think outside our own lives, which always seem smaller than what others have to endure.

So on May 20, a man standing outside of Walmart handed me a small spiritual newsletter:

"Please, won't you help me, ma'am? Everyone has been ignoring me all morning. I just need a one dollar donation."

"Sure," I said, handing me the dollar.

He said thanks in a deep and sincere way, like a light went on in him.

I looked back and the others did ignore him. I stayed for two minutes and not one pedestrian even looked at him.

Little did he know that his deep thanks lit up a light in me, too, inspiring me to be conscious of more opportunities to give.

Take up the challenge at here. It's easier than you think.

How shall we give today?

A Family Imagines No Possessions

In this article in the New York Times, a family aims to give away all their accumulated possessions and "let the Universe take them for a ride" instead. They aim to be organic homesteaders in a movement called voluntary simplicity.

“It’s amazing the amount of things a family can acquire,” said Mrs. Harris, 28, attributing their good life to “the ridiculous amount of money” her husband earned as a computer network engineer in this early Wi-Fi mecca.

Watch them change everything about their lives as consumers and discover true values; finding out what life is really made of: Love and Happiness--at their blog, Cage Free Family. Read the full article here.