2014, look out …here we come! 🙂
If You Want A Better 2014, You’ll Need To Leave This Behind
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Monthly Archives: December 2013
Circumstances
When a bird is alive, it eats ants. When the birth is dead, ants eat it. One tree can be made into a million matchsticks, but only one matchstick is needed to burn a million trees. Circumstance can change at any time. Don’t devalue or hurt anyone in this life. Be good and do good… –unknown
Enjoy! …and be nice.
graphic and text credit: unknown
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Being Alone Is Tough
Connect and Enjoy!
Being alone is tough, on the outside and the inside. We need to be connected with people, whether we like it or not. A painless way to connect is to reach out, to help, to volunteer, to give. —Paul Mark Sutherland
.
original graphic credit: unknown
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Holiday Greetings
Enjoy!
Thank you to each and every of my online friends and colleagues. You are special people in my world. May the joy and peace of Christmastime be your special companion this holiday season and throughout the coming new year. —Paul Mark Sutherland
original graphic credit: unknown
Time Alone
We need others
but we also need
to be alone
contemplative
going within
connecting to Source
Make time to be
with our Creator,
to listen to that
inner voice of
guiding love. Put
into action what
you learn and you
will live in peaceful
harmony all of your days.
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Christmas Miracle Happens for a Homeless Man and His Injured Dog
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Christmas Presents Don’t Get Better Than This
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What My Heart Tells Me To Do
Last May, 64 year-old Calgary resident Tom Crist was eating lunch in Palm Springs, California with a group of golf buddies. As they ate sandwiches in the club house and waited for their tee time, Tom’s cell phone rang. The call was coming from an unknown number in western Canada. It was probably a telemarketer, but Tom picked up the phone anyway just to be safe. It was not a telemarketer. Tom was greeted on the other end of the line by an official from the Western Canada Lottery Corporation. The official informed Tom that he had just won a $40 million Lotto Max jackpot. The largest jackpot anyone from Calgary had ever won. Instead of jumping up and down and screaming his lungs out with joy, Tom quietly finished his lunch and proceeded to play 18 holes. He never mentioned the news to any of his golf buddies.
Unlike most big lottery winners who spend days, or even months, trying to figure out how they’ll spend their newfound riches, Tom Crist needed only a moment to decide where his $40 million in winnings would go: all to charity.
His plan was to donate his winnings in honor of his wife Jan, who died in February of 2012 after a long battle with lung cancer.
His golf buddies weren’t the only ones who were kept in the dark. Tom didn’t even tell his own children until earlier this week when he shocked them with another announcement: Not only had he won $40 million in the lottery, he was going to give every cent away. “I knew where the money was going to go as soon as I got that call, I just didn’t want the media, the press, all that kind of stuff. So I just kept putting it off and putting it off, and putting it off.”
About The Picture
Finally, at the behest of the Western Canada Lottery Corp., he agreed to go public and have his photo taken. The fine print on the lottery subscription he bought required it.
The shy and retiring senior showed up for his win photo in dark glasses and a baseball cap. “They asked, ‘Is that your natural look?’ I said, yep. That’s all you’re getting. You’re not getting a smile, nothing.”
About His Kids
Tom informed his children that he was planning to put the money into family charity trust. Over the next few years, the family will meet and decide which charities need or deserve the money most. In honor of his late wife, cancer charities will hold a special place in Tom’s heart. At the top of his donation list are the Canadian Cancer Society and Calgary’s Tom Baker Cancer Centre. The Tom Baker Center is especially close to his heart because that’s where his wife was treated.
Giving It Away
Crist delivered his first big check — $1.2 million — on Tuesday to the Alberta Cancer Foundation, which collects donations for Calgary’s Tom Baker Cancer Centre, where Jan had been treated.
He strode into the ACF office, check in hand, without any prior warning, Phoebe Dey, a spokesperson for the foundation told NBC News.
“He surprised us,” Dey said. “He said that this is phase one of his gifts and that his intention with us was to make an annual gift. He stressed that this was just the beginning and that he intended to give away all $40 million.”
The donation, Dey said, “will go to enhance care for other patients. It will help an awful lot. He told us that he had been successful in life and already had enough money to take care of his family and that this is what his wife would have wanted. He was doing it in her name.”
Though Crist acknowledges that his actions may spark generosity in others, “I’m not doing it because it’s going to inspire somebody else, I’m doing it because that’s what my heart tells me to do.”
Thank you, Tom, for exemplifying the truth that enough really is enough.
Namaste.
credits: This post was compiled using articles authored by
Brian Warner/Celebrity Net Worth and NBC News
.
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The Giver of Pittsburgh
The Answer Can’t Be Yes Unless You Ask
Florida Orphan Who Pleaded For Family Will Spend
Christmas With Prospective Adoptive Parents.
The 15-year-old orphan who touched millions of hearts with his plea for a family inside a Florida church will spend Christmas with potential parents.
Davion Only, who has spent his life in various orphan homes, is spending Christmas with a prospective adoptive family. The couple is reportedly planning to take Only away during the holiday for his first vacation.
In October, the teen made headlines worldwide when he pleaded for a family to adopt inside the St. Mark Missionary Baptist Church in St. Petersburg.
Only, dressed in a dark suit and borrowed tie, told the packed church that he was seeking a family to call his own. His requirements were simple. “I’ll take anyone,” he said. “Old or young, dad or mom, black, white, purple. I don’t care. And I would be really appreciative. The best I could be.“
Only was born while his mother was in jail and has never had a permanent home, according to the Tampa Bay Times, which first reported about the teen’s plight.
Last summer, Only tried to find his biological mother, but instead found her obituary, the newspaper reported. She had died a few weeks earlier.
Only also appealed to Florida Gov. Rick Scott in November to speak on behalf of all homeless Florida teenagers seeking a family. “Even though I’m going through an adoption process right now at the moment, I still hope that other kids in foster care get the benefit that I’m going to have to be adopted and to have somewhere to call home and to have a bed to call theirs,” he told the governor and his cabinet, according to the newspaper.
While Only’s ordeal has a happy ending, there are 610,042 people who are homeless in the U.S., some 23 percent, or 138,149, are children, according to the government. The states with the highest rates of homeless children are California, Florida and Texas.
This story was originally published by Fox News on December 13, 2013
(link to original story HERE)
When we go after what we want while treating others with respect, it’s amazing what we can end up with. Well, on second thought, no it isn’t. It isn’t amazing at all…it’s completely normal! Congrats to Davion Only for learning this treasure early in life.
And kudos to his new parents for Giving Themselves Away in HUGE way!
Happy Christmas, Everyone.
GYA today 