53 years, 53 acts of kindness
The pandemic didn’t allow Debra Ferrell to gather with her whole family for her birthday. So instead, she celebrated the day by giving back — with 53 gifts from her heart.
Ferrell went on social media and asked people for suggestions on acts of kindness that she could perform for others during her birth month, one for every year that she’s been alive.
“It’s one of the hardest times in my history, so I figured, why not make other people smile?” said Ferrell, who is from Roanoke, Virginia.
The requests for her Oct. 4 birthday arrived from across the U.S.: Parents who hoped for words of encouragement for their kids on their first year of virtual school. A woman who wished for a gift basket for her fiancé, a doctor at a hospital’s COVID -19 unit.
A friend of a family in Minnesota that lost their 4-year-old to cancer, who wanted them to feel that they were not alone.
For them, Ferrell found a memorial wind chime with a note on the clapper that says, “When you hear the wind, I am with you.”
“We just felt like that was appropriate to send to them with a letter about, you know, that someone hears and someone is there all the way from Roanoke, Virginia,” Ferrell said. “We just want you to know someone cares.”
This is not the first time she has shown her instinct for caring. On her birthday in 2014, she started “Love With Skin On,” an organization that she runs with family and friends. According to its Facebook page, the group aims to “share tangible acts of love and kindness.”
Its motto? “Be Love. Do Stuff.”
“I know that might sound cheesy, but it’s just one of my favorite things to do,” said Ferrell, who works as a resident service coordinator at a retire
ment community. “I just feel that if we live our life trying to make other people smile, I’m the one who gets the most out of it.”
Bieber, hospital choir record single
Justin Bieber has teamed up with a choir of London medical staff to record a special charity Christmas single.
The choir, made up of nurses, doctors and other health care staff working in the British capital’s Lewisham and Greenwich public health service, joined the Canadian pop star for a special version of his song “Holy” in a bid to top the Christmas chart.
Choir members recorded their vocals at London’s famous Abbey Road Studios. Profits from the collaboration will go to National Health Service charities.
The choir gained fame when it vied with Bieber in 2015 for the Christmas
No. 1 song. Bieber urged his millions of fans on Twitter to support the choir, not him, and it eventually won the top spot on the singles chart. The star then traveled to London and presented them with their charity award.
“It’s great to be reunited with the Lewisham and Greenwich NHS choir, as we share a fun bit of U.K. chart history together,” said Bieber, 26. “Especially in these difficult times, I’m humbled to team up with them for a charity single that will benefit NHS workers on the front lines of this pandemic and pay tribute to their unbelievable dedication.”