The Ripple Effect...Kelsey's AWESOME Birthday Party!!!

The following guest post was written by an amazing girl named Kelsey.  What an honor to share the story of how she and her friends decided to create some "ripples" throughout their community!

My mom saw the Marquis' blog post about Alyssa's 15th birthday party and thought it was a great idea for me to do for my 16th birthday that was coming up. So, when my birthday time came around, I invited 5 of my good friends to come and do random acts of kindness, in honor of my 16th birthday.

When the day came, my friends came over in early afternoon. We then brainstormed a list of 16 acts of kindness on our chalkboard wall in the basement. We prayed before we left that God would lead us to the people that He wanted us to help and the people who needed some encouragement in their lives.

Then, we set off to do our work. All 6 of us girls went to elementary school together, so for our first "act", we made homemade cards and brought them to two of our favorite elementary school teachers to let them know how much we appreciate them and to thank them for all that they did for us. This is a picture of the 6 of us with one of the teachers we went to visit. She was in tears when she read our card and us girls were all smiles! It was really neat to see how much she was touched. She sent me a card later that month saying that she shared that experience with her 1st graders and that the teachers at our elementary school are going to incorporate doing random acts of kindness for their holiday staff party. It was encouraging to see that what we did for her was already having an effect on even more people.

Next, we went to the movie theater and gave movie tickets and candy to a family of 4 that was walking into the theater. They were in disbelief at first, but then they were really thankful and tried to explain to their kids what we were doing.

Afterwards, we made a quick stop at the laundromat and taped quarters on the washers and dryers.

After that, we went to Caribou. At Caribou, we went into the bathroom with sticky notes and markers where we wrote inspirational notes saying things like, "You are beautiful!" and " You are loved!" We then left, hoping someone would see our notes before a worker took them down. But then we realized that it didn't matter if a worker took them down because maybe they were the one who needed to see it the most. We also left 3 Caribou gift cards with the cashier to give to the next 3 customers that came in.

Next, we went to Target to get supplies for our next act of kindness. There we bought a bouquet of flowers, supplies to make a care package for a new mom at the hospital, and supplies to make a fun basket for the kids in the waiting room. We also gave out a Target gift cards to a family with a new baby and a mom with her son as they were walking into Target. The mom told us that we were an answered prayer. It was so cool! Then, we went to the hospital. When we got there and walked up to the front door, we saw a little girl sitting outside and she was crying. So we decided to give her one of the flowers from our bouquet.  One of my friends went up and gave her the flowers because we thought she'd be too overwhelmed by all 6 of us. She was shy, but she smiled from ear to ear and said thank you. We knew she appreciated it.

We went inside and went first to the waiting room. We gave our basket full of books and coloring books to some of the nurses at the front desk. We explained to them what we were out doing and that we were hoping they could keep it in there waiting room for kids to use when they have to come to the hospital.

For our next stop, we went to the maternity floor. We talked to the nurses at the front desk and asked them to give our basket of new baby clothes and supplies to the new mother who they thought needed it the most. The nurses were super excited and started conferring right away who they were going to give it to.

The next act of kindness we did was definitely our favorite out of all of them. The grandma of one of my friends who was with, had been at that hospital about a month before. So, we decided that we were going to give the bouquet of flowers to whoever was in that room at the time. We went up to the first nurse we saw on the floor she had been on and asked her if she could give the bouquet of flowers to the patient in that room. She smiled, and said we could go in and do it ourselves. We were all super nervous, because we had no idea what kind of a person we would find in that room. We ended up finding a sweet old lady named Vivian. We told her what we were doing and that we wanted to give her the bouquet of flowers. She smiled and teared up, saying that the flowers were her favorite colors. She was so grateful and it brought her so much joy to see young high school girls out doing what we were doing. Seeing her reaction and tears, brought all of us to tears. It was a moment we won't ever forget.

After the hospital, we did 3 more acts of kindness. We handed out rice krispie treats to kids and families that were at a park, where we met a paraplegic man who was so joyful and excited to see us out giving. Then, we did the Drive Thru difference at McDonalds. It was fun to watch the man in the car behind us when the worker told him that his meal had been paid for. He smiled and waved at us to show his thanks. We also gave candy to the kid working the drive thru. He was so excited then to help us out! For the last thing we did, we went to Minneapolis and handed out fruit to homeless people we saw on the streets. It was a real eye opener to how much we should appreciate everything we have in our life. It also made us realize even more that because God has blessed us with so much, we need to bless others with what we have because that is what life is all about.

All in all, doing the random acts of kindness for my birthday was a life changing experience not only for me, but also for my friends and everyone who we helped. It is something I would recommend to anyone because it is so rewarding to see how you can make an impact on the live of other people. We believe 100% that God led us to help these people. The Wednesday after we did this, we shared about our experiences with our youth group and how we saw God helping us through all of it. One of the girls in our youth group decided that she was going to do the same thing for her birthday that was in a couple weeks too. It was amazing to see the "ripple effect" on what we did for my birthday. It was an experience I will never forget!