a simple act of kindness.

Yesterday I had the privilege of crossing off one of the biggest things on my bucketlist. You see, I have had what  I like to call a life of learning and making me stronger experiences, and I've been blessed to be in a much better place today. So, the thing I got to cross off was volunteering at a homeless shelter. As we walked in, there was a huge room, full of mattresses. we walked all the way through and saw all of the people staying there. We finally got to the small back room where there was some tables and chairs where we set up crafts and read stories to the children of the shelter. We talked to them and helped them with their hats they were making. We talked to them about their favorite things and what they liked to do in their free time. Some of them were a little more shy but soon opened up at least a little bit to us. To see the smiles we were putting on those sweet children's faces was beyond amazing.

After a while, me and Audrey looked over at another table where a girl was sitting all alone making a hat. We went over, sat by her, and asked her what her name was. Kaitlyn. She's 10 years old and loves horses and dogs, just like me. We were filling an "all about me" paper and one of the questions was "what makes you special?". This is what really gets to me. This amazing, beautiful little 10 year old girl, who should be knowing that she is a princess, could not think of why she was special. The rest of the time we were there we were helping Kaitlyn figure out why she thought she was special. Here's what we came up with in the few minutes we were there:
She makes great boondoggles.
She has gorgeous hair.
She has gorgeous eyes.
She is really nice.
She is good at making hats. :)

We had to stop at that because we were forced to leave. As we walked out, people and kids said thanks to us and I couldn't help but say thank you back. One of the kids said "I love you" to us. I didn't want to leave!

Service. Service, in my opinion, is the best way to put a smile on your face, because guess what? It makes other people smile too. And who doesn't want to live in a world of smiles instead of tears? If we want to make our world better, we need to simply serve others, because serving others serves us too. You can't even imagine the joy it brought me to make these kids who have been through so much forget about the hard times for even just and hour and a half.

Oh, there's another point to this. Be so grateful for what you have! Because you really have so much!







peace out.