Awesome Stories 204

/ January 10, 2015

This week Awesome Stories brings you cave digging, volunteering, a child prodigy, smiles and compassion.

Cave Digging Art

Ra Paulette has a passion for digging caves. What we find inside are elaborate works of art that take years to complete. Watch the video for a look at this awesome work. I find them beautiful and would love to visit, though I can’t help but wonder about the environmental impact of digging such large caves. Due to a recent documentary, Ra is becoming known and actually selling the caves! Enjoy!

Organizing All Hands

After being deeply touched by the disaster from the tsunami that ravaged southeast Asia in 2004, David Campbell decided to see if he could help. What started as a simple desire to help, led to a trip, then months of volunteering and eventually grew into a new passion for service. David thought he would be a solo volunteer, but his management skills were put to good use, as he became the one organizing the volunteers. He repeated the process after hurricane Katrina, and eventually started his own group called All Hands Volunteers with the simple mission to offer sustainable disaster relief that helps communities rebuild while empowering volunteers. Beyond helping 45,000 families in 45 projects around the world, the volunteers are often transformed too, finding new career paths aligned with service.

Child Prodigy on Piano

There seems to be an explosion of young children with great artistic talent, some of whom I’ve featured in my Awesome Stories. Today I’m sharing a video of Cheryl playing Mozart’s Fur Elise. Besides playing a beautiful rendition, she is a cute and composed 5 year old. Wow!

Queen of Compassioncompassion, Awesome Stories

The story of Gitanjali Babbar and her work in the brothels of Dehli, India is amazing. Her courage, compassion and dedication touched me deeply. What started as health research has become a burning passion. Gitanjali started a non-profit that is transforming the brothels of Dehli into centers for learning and community, creating safe spaces for the women and children to come alive. Read her inspiring story and how deeply she is committed to helping these women.

Smiles to Brighten Your Day

This is a lovely reminder to let your smile or kindness brighten the day for others. Kristi Jojedlicki writes about a man who routinely took the time to smile, ask questions and demonstrate real caring for her. ‘James’ met her one day when it was raining with no apparent concern for getting wet. When Kristi asked what he was doing standing in the rain, he said “making sure your day got off to a good start!” If we’re lucky, we have one or more people like James to brighten our days. If not, consider being the one who brightens the day for others with your kindness and smiles. 🙂

Will you join the love revolution? Please consider how you can help bring simple goodness into the lives of others.

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20 thoughts on “Awesome Stories 204”

  2. The Queen of Compassion story is beautuful, the way a twist of fate brought Gitanjali to her ‘calling’. Very inspring.
    And little Cheryl playing the piano, what a gift! Not only did she play technically well, but such feeling in it as well.
    Thanks for sharing Brad 🙂

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  3. I’m glad we can share our passions and hopefully learn and be inspired by folks like Gitanjali. Her compassion and dedication are very touching. Cheryl’s piano playing struck me the same way, many other children had amazing technical but not the feeling.

    Thanks for contributing Robert! 🙂

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    • Me too, Brad!!! My son did not read music…he had a woman piano teacher…she was in her 70’s. She would show him how to play it and then he could play it!! He never practiced, yet he entered competitions and did well!! It was really very amazing. We moved and she would drive 50 minutes to give him his lessons, she did not want to give him up. Even in the snow….her big Cadillac would slide sideways into the plowed snow…a perfect park job…and they would sit at the piano together and make beautiful music. 🙂

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  10. I love the smiles to brighten your day story – something so simple as a smile can make such a profound difference in another person’s day and life. The ironic thing is that what it does for another is usually returned ten fold to the giver.

    As I have always thought – A smile given to another is a smile received in your soul.

    Thank you Brad for another set of wonderful and inspiring stories 🙂

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