{"id":4002,"date":"2008-12-05T00:00:00","date_gmt":"1970-01-01T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lesliedinaberg.com\/wordpress\/?p=4002"},"modified":"2013-11-07T21:58:17","modified_gmt":"2013-11-08T05:58:17","slug":"29-gifts-bring-bountiful-blessings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lesliedinaberg.com\/wordpress\/?p=4002","title":{"rendered":"29 Gifts Bring Bountiful Blessings"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"29gifts-bg\"<\/a>The story is right out of a Lifetime<\/em><\/a> movie, only this time it’s true.<\/p>\n

Lovely 30-something Cami Walker<\/a> was on top of the world. She had conquered addictions to alcohol and drugs–now her career was thriving and she just married the man of her dreams. Then, two weeks after her honeymoon, her whole world came crashing down around her. Her hands didn’t quite work, then one of her eyes stopped functioning, and she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.<\/p>\n

Multiple sclerosis is an autoimmune disease that affects the brain and spinal cord. It isn’t fatal, but it can result in serious physical and cognitive disabilities, depending upon the form it takes. Soon after being diagnosed, Cami didn’t have the strength to keep working. Feeling desperate, hopeless and depressed, she decided to perform a simple ritual suggested by one of her spiritual teachers, a South African medicine woman named Mbali Creazzo<\/a>. The idea was to take her mind off her disease–and herself–by focusing on helping others and giving something away each day for 29 days in a row.<\/p>\n

“I thought the suggestion was crazy at first, but decided it couldn’t hurt to try it. Things couldn’t get much worse,” said Cami. “I was shocked by how quickly things turned around for me. For me personally it’s totally helped turn my health around in pretty miraculous ways. When I started this I was extremely sick and I was very lonely, I really had gotten to the point where I isolated myself from people. I was feeling totally alone, I was broke, I was so ill I hadn’t been able to work in months and I was very much in a downward spiral in my life.”<\/p>\n

By day 14, Cami was able to walk without her cane, and was able to start working part-time again by day 29. “And my bank account was actually greatly improved because I was able to start working part time again and work just started showing up for me … it was crazy, like my phone just started ringing and clients just started showing up and it blew my mind. And, I think most importantly, I had reconnected with friends and family by the end and made some new friends as well,” she said.<\/p>\n

Now in her ninth giving cycle, Cami was so inspired by the improvements in her life that she decided to turn the 29-Day Giving Challenge into a worldwide giving movement. Today www.29gifts.org<\/a> has more than 3,200 givers in 38 countries, including–drum roll please-\u2014yours truly.<\/p>\n

“I have definitely been surprised by how quickly it’s grown,” said Cami.<\/p>\n

I’m not that surprised because it’s fun and it’s mostly easy. Gifts can be as big or as little you like. The important thing is to make a mindful effort to do something nice for somebody else. One day I played 12 games of checkers in a row with my son, without a single grumble or complaint from me. Another day I bought lunch for a stranger without a single grumble or complaint from me. I’m pretty sure the not complaining part is important. It doesn’t matter what you do, but the website is full of great ideas for gifts of time, money, things, or kind words. In fact, so many great stories have been posted online that Cami got a book deal out of it. Her book will be coming out in the fall.<\/p>\n

“I think one of the coolest stories that’s come out of the site is Operation Teddy Bear Care<\/a>,” she said. “It started with a woman named Maureen Forbes who lives in the bush in South Africa with no electricity. She powers her computer with a solar panel that charges up a generator so that she can have two-three hours of light and use her computer. She posted on her blog that she had been visiting children in some of the remote AIDS clinics and she was just appalled by the conditions that they were living in and the level of poverty and that none of them had anything to call their own. She posted that she sews and she wanted to sew 100 teddy bears to give away but she only had enough fabric for 20.”<\/p>\n

Flashes of the Hanukah story go through my mind, as Cami continues. “Someone on the U.S. side, his name is BJ in Georgia, he read her blog and said, ‘I’m going to help you out. We’re going to help you get enough materials to do 1,000 teddy bears.’ … One of my gifts was to help them create a website and an identity for themselves and get their organization functioning on its own. … Our goal is to help them give 1,000 gifts to South African children living in poverty by the 31st of December. And so far I think we’ve given almost 400 already, so we need about 600 more donation packages to be purchased. Go to teddybearcare.ning.com<\/a> if you want to check them out.”<\/p>\n

I went to the website, and guess what Day 25 was for me?<\/p>\n

I asked Cami why she thinks the 29 gifts challenge has caught on. “It’s a time where I think a lot of people are tired of the negative messages they see in the media over and over, and feeling kind of scared and frustrated with the state of the economy and some of the other things. The reality is that there are a lot of problems that we’ve got to deal with, especially in America but pretty much everywhere. And I do think that part of the reason this has caught on is that people are looking for something positive that they can feel like they are part of.”<\/p>\n

Sounds like a happy ending to me.<\/p>\n

Originally published in the Santa Barbara Daily Sound<\/a>\u00a0on December 5, 2008.<\/h6>\n
If you’d like to be part of the 29 Gifts Challenge visit www.29gifts.org<\/a> for more information, and tell Leslie you’re doing it at email<\/a>. For more columns visit www.LeslieDinaberg.com.<\/h6>\n

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