A Kindness to be Thankful For

An old friend posted a heartwarming story on Facebook. She relayed that a girls high school volleyball team from Paradise, CA - the town that burned to the ground in the Camp Fire - received new uniforms and equipment from their opponent in the California Interscholastic Federation (CIF) playoffs because their own equipment had been lot to the fire.  Crossing my fingers that the story wasn't fabricated, I visited Snopes.com, and found that it is, in fact, true.

Here is the story in greater detail as reported online. May we all be thankful for acts of kindness in this week of Thanksgiving and every week.  And may we all be inspired to act in similar fashion:

As the Grass Valley Union newspaper and other news outlets reported, the Paradise Adventist Academy girls’ volleyball team arrived to compete in a California Interscholastic Federation (CIF) playoff game on 10 November 2018 to find that their opponents at Forest Lake Christian High School had provided them with both material and financial support.

After the game, Forest Lake athletic director LaRon Gordon announced that local parents and students had donated around $16,000 as well as shoes, clothes, and toiletries to their opponents as well as gift cards for each individual player. Gordon’s team also gave Paradise Adventist new jerseys, shorts, and knee pads to use for the contest, which was a semifinal match in the Northern California Division VI regional tournament.

Forest Lake also received permission from the CIF to forego charging admission to the game in favor of donating all tickets sales to help victims of the fire.

“I’ve never been so overwhelmed by so many things I would have never thought possible, and this is one of the most amazing things I could ever have thought would happen,” Paradise Adventist head coach Jason Eyer said following the announcement. “Your community is awesome. We will be forever grateful.”