My family and I just returned from a winter break vacation at Walt Disney World Magic Kingdom. A few mitzvahs occurred while we were on our vacation.
552) Waiting in one of the incredible long lines for a ride the second day I stuck up a conversation with a mom and her two kids roughly the same age as mine. We had almost an hour in line as we waited for our ride. Hers turned out to be quite a sad story. Her older son of 14 years old had been killed during the summer in an accident and this was her first Christmas since he died. She knew she needed to do something different this year for the family. I felt immediately compelled to give her a hug and show her some compassion since I couldn’t even begin to know what a difficult time this must be for her. I think she appreciated being able to openly talk about it even though I was a stranger. She told me several stories and even mentioned how hard it had been on her young son, since the two boys had been very close. Towards the end of our wait in line, I started a game with the 4 kids just to stop them from complaining about waiting. My heart ached for this mom and I only pray that somehow time will help ease her grief.
553) My daughter and I made it a point to carry our reusable bag with us through Disney although we didn’t use it every time we did manage to use it several times. In one case, my daughter explained about why we have our own bag. I live in a part of the country where this is not weird but the expressions on the faces in Florida was like we were from another planet. At one store we did have a wonderful discussion with the clerk and she loved the fact that we concerned about the use of needless bags and was disappointed that more people didn’t do this in Florida.
After our Disney excursion, we spent several days with my in laws at a huge retirement community. We had a couple good mitzvahs from our stay with them.
554) I offered to help an frail older gentlemen in their complex carry in his groceries. He said he was fine but thanked me for offering my help, he also told us a story about another stranger that helped him get his wife into her car one time recently from her wheelchair. He said he didn’t know who she was but was so happy she had helped him, since it was becoming increasingly harder for him to do this. Later that day, my husband and father in law who had run into their neighbor, told me that I had made a new friend in the building.
555) This is my favorite mitzvah from the vacation. It was New Years Day and I had woken up early. Since I hadn’t had much time to myself for days, I figure I would slip out and go for a walk around the property. I began my walk and decided I would try to find the club house that my in laws had often spoken about. I asked two ladies I passed after about 15 minutes into my walk if they could tell me where the club house was. They were walking away from it but offered to take me back to show me. They also told me that I couldn’t enter it without ID but they would be happy to show me around as their guests. It was not so close so we chat while we walked back to the club house. Once inside they showed me the pool, exercise room and as we got to the ball room we saw the remains from the New Year’s eve party from the night before. The clean up crew had just started to pick up. There was lots of garbage including party hats, streamers and left over bottles and cans. One of the woman was appalled and was so disappointed at the complex for not recycling. She told her friend that she wanted to pick up what they could and take it to the community recycling. I decided to join them. Together the three of us picked up about 3 garbage bags full of recyclable items. I was getting worried that I should get back since no one knew where I was but we all laughed that their mitzvah to show me the club house turned into a wonderful mitzvah for all of us and a great way to start the New Year. I felt almost giddy coming home and telling my husband about my morning adventure.
556) Solomon moves out of the way to let an older man go by.
557) Complimented a woman on the way home on a gorgeous jacket she was wearing.
1,000 Mitzvahs 