Charity from the Heart

We went down to the KSON radio station and Steven and I both spoke on the air a little after 2:00 pm.

Steven didn't totally chicken out this time, but it's still hard to get him to say too much.

They raised $532,695 for the hospital over two days time.

On the subject of charitable contributions, we had an interesting experience with Sean this week.

I got an email from his teacher informing me that Sean had donated $120 to their school fundraiser for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, called "Pasta for Pennies". Sean's teacher just wanted to be sure I was aware.

We weren't aware. When Sean got home I asked him why he didn't tell us. He said that he was pretty sure we wouldn't have let him take the money.

We talked to him about budgeting his money. The money is his and he is free to do as he wishes with it, within reason, but Doug and I want to be apprised of any large purchases, even for charity.

We told him there are many worthy organizations out there and even when it comes to charity, we have to budget our contributions and choose which organizations we will support.

We also let him know how proud we were that he would rather give his money to an organizationt that helps kids with cancer rather than buying another Gameboy game.

The upshot was that he decided to give half of that money to the school fundraiser and half to St. Jude.

When he took the money to class, he brought it in loose and just stuffed the bills into the collection box. He told a friend of his how much he gave, but no one else.

The friend told the teacher, otherwise he wouldn't have known who did it.

When we were in Memphis, Sean's school did a Math-a-thon fundraiser for St. Jude, the kids are to answer 200 math questions and they try to get pledges for each question correctly answered.

Steven was in treatment and Sean called and emailed everyone he knew. He answered all the questions correctly and he raised $650 for St. Jude.

The entire school raised $1100, so half of their entire donations came from first grader Sean.

On Sean's last day at school when we were leaving Memphis, they called him up on stage and made a big deal about what a good citizen he was, the school fundraiser was just one of several things.

True charity comes from giving with no thought of reward for oneself.

I think maybe Sean has figured that out.

- Kathleen