I wanted to let you know what a wonderful work you are doing with you’re My-Friend-In-Need.com web site. I read about the family who was struggling to equip their disabled daughter with a new wheelchair, and I was so moved that I sent them $500 through PayPal. I know many people might think that was foolish of me, that maybe the whole story was a lie and I threw my money away. But I don’t look at it that way. To me, I helped someone meet a need that might otherwise not have been met. What goes around comes around… if they were lying about it, that’s there problem, but someday if I need help, the benefits of what I did will come back to me.

This seems to be a common sentiment; that there is no way we can know for sure if someone is telling the truth or just trying to get money for some undisclosed reason, but that it doesn’t really matter either way. That giving, being kind, helping someone, is its own reward. That thought is also the focus of this next letter:

When I found your website, my first thought was that someone would have to be crazy to give money to a person who was probably making up a bunch of lies to con good people out of money. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that if I want to help someone, I can’t worry about if I’m being cheated, that’s their problem, and somehow, someday they will get what they deserve for their dishonesty. What matters is that I did my part and tried to help someone – that’s what really matters.

 I hope that these e-mails are and encouraging to you as they are to me. I am continually amazed by the kindness and generosity that I get to see as a result of this web site.

Please know, if you ever have anything you would like to tell me about, I will never post any part of your testimonial without your permission, and I am very careful to protect your privacy.

The first letter I will share with you is from a woman who used our site for several months to try to get out from under crushing debt. I’ll let her words speak for themselves:

Thanks to your website, I’ve learned what it really means to have “friends indeed.” When I posted my donation page, my husband and I were literally drowning in debt from student loans and medical expenses. I was working two jobs, and my husband was doing all he could, but since he has a very long commute each day, there was no way he could take on anything to try to earn more money.

Thanks to the donations we received from “friends” on your site, I was able to quit my second job and devote the time to my husband and daughter that they deserve. Although we still have a ways to go before we are completely debt-free, we are no longer losing sleep and ruining our relationship with worry. I sincerely think that your web site saved my health and my marriage. Thank you, thank you, for creating this wonderful place!

I’ll post one more e-mail for now, but trust me, I have a pile of them building up, and I will share as many of them with you as I can.

Like I said when I made my donation page, our family is not really any different from any other typical American family. We had our house and cars paid off, and we weren’t struggling with mountains of credit card debt, but we had a couple of pressing needs that we just couldn’t see any way of taking care of.

First of all, our house is what you would call a “character home”. We love it, but it’s over 120 years old, and needed some serious work. Between needing a new roof, and some work to take care of a seriously leaky basement, we were looking at a bill over $20,000. Then, one of our cars also picked that time to give up the ghost, and with a Mom and Dad that both work, and 5 kids that need to be driven to various things they participate in, we really couldn’t live with just one car.

Anyway, the money we received from your web site really made a difference in our lives. Between the donations we received and a bit of help from our church and family, we were able to replace our car with a good used vehicle AND pay for almost all of the repairs on our house. The contractor is being kind enough to allow us to pay off what’s left over the next few months at a very low interest rate, and we will soon be debt-free again. We can’t tell you how grateful we are that we stumbled across your web site… it has truly been a blessing.

Wow, isn’t that great? And I love it that both of these letters make a very important point: once they created their donation pages, neither one of these folks just sat back and waited for the money to roll in. They kept working at their problem from several different angles, and I like to think they were rewarded for their hard work and persistence.

Until next time, I wish you all the best!