Thanks for the rice – day 5 of happiness month

What have you said thank you for today?

Was it the sunrise, the bird song or a thoughtful gift someone gave you?

perhaps you’ve not yet said thank you and instead you’ve focused on all the things that are wrong with your life.

Recently I’ve been feeling a bit down myself. I’ve been lacking in motivation and every day has felt like a struggle. Heck, even my clothes and shoes have been wrong. I’ve been having bad hair days and my pillows are uncomfortable. I’m bummed that there is a problem with our router and the internet keeps cutting out. The wardrobe I ordered is now out of stock (a month after ordering it) and to top it all our bedroom ceiling has developed a leak.

I mean, life doesn’t get any worse, right?

But then I received a short letter which changed everything.

The letter read:

Dear …

Thank you for the help in my studies. Also for the food that you gave. I shared it with my brothers and sisters and they said Thank you to you. I also learned many things in school.

Thank you and God bless
Love Mary Joyce

Mary Joyce is a 9 year old girl from the Philippines whom we sponsor. She lives on a rubbish dump by Smokey Mountain with her 2 brothers and 4 sisters. Her father is a waste picker and when we started sponsoring her, a year ago, she weighed 16 kg. Little Miss green weighed that when she was three years old…

For £18 a month, Mary Joyce gets a full time education, her uniform and books along with health and food packages for her and her family.

Little Miss Green once crafted Mary Joyce a paper doll and sent it to her. It was a work of art that she spent ages on, but it was never mentioned in the letters.

Why not and how could I explain that to LMG?

Because the thing Mary Joyce loves most of all is to know she can eat that day. This is what makes a difference to her and her family…How about that for a jolt of reality? It was not without tears that I told Little miss Green about the hardships these families go through every single day.

Children as young as 5 years of age understand that if they don’t work, they don’t eat and if they can’t eat, they could die! So they grow up fast and take on a huge responsibility to work alongside their families in sweltering rubbish dumps, sorting waste (often hazardous) to sell to buyers.

Over in the UK times are hard. Food and fuel prices are sky rocketing and there is no doubt that financially people are suffering. But for just £18 a month we can help improve the life of one little girl on the other side of the world.

I might think I can’t afford it but you know what? It’s the price of a week’s worth of Starbucks, a months dvd rental or a couple of bottles of nail varnish.

Suddenly life doesn’t seem so hard does it? And if your comparative state of abundance doesn’t make you feel happy, then what will?

Please share what you feel happy about in the comments below, blog about it or tweet with the hashtag #happinesshappens when …