Simple Giving

by Matt
(USA)

Giving Time

One of the nicest things I've ever been given was really quite simple. One Sunday morning, during the Christmas season here in the cold Northeast, I and several of my friends volunteered at a local charity selling Christmas Trees. Every year, this group gets
truckloads of trees shipped in from Canada, sets them up in their basketball court outdoors, and opens shop to sell the trees to the public in this large city suburb.

The money they raise all goes towards the daily activities of the organization which runs sports leagues, after-school programs, and other great things for the youth of the town. The work my friends and I did was really simple, unload trees, unwrap them from their
protective wrapping, and help families pick out the right one. We spent several hours there that day, talking to people, swapping Christmas stories, and in general having a good time and knowing we were helping a worthy cause.

One particular family was very nice to us, and asked us where we were all from. The answers were a bit more widespread then she expected, California, Minnesota, New York, Illinois. We were all students at a local university we said, that explains the spread of hometowns.

The dad said he was glad that we all were helping out locally, as he said there are some people who live in the town that could even care less. It was nice to be told you are helping someone and even better to show them that young people truly do care.

As I carried the tree of this family out of the lot to their car, the mother tried to give me a tip for helping them pick the tree out.
I told them I couldn't take it, they insisted, and I took it, but told them I'd donate it to the charity I was working for that morning. They said just as well and drove off leaving me there feeling good. I went back into the building, told them the story and handed them
the money the family had given me. The man running it refused the money at first, but after a minute said he wanted to help us out since we had been so kind ourselves. So he took the money and instead drove to a local bakery and came back with food and coffee for all the volunteers on that cold winter morning.

Never had waking up on a Sunday morning at 8am felt so good.

That is my story on the power of giving.