Pay It Forward
4/21/2010
Thanks to Chris Barbeiri for the following:
Sandy Springs UMC emphasized a “Pay it Forward” theme during Lent, with a slogan of “Acts of Christian kindness can spread throughout the world and change it.”
They printed up business cards with the church logo, “Faith in Action”, “Pay it Forward” and the slogan. Kathy Wright is the evangelism chair and she also happens to volunteer for the Iditarod dog-sled race every year. She’s been doing this for years and flies to Alaska for a week or so every year. This year, she was on an Alaska Airlines flight during her trip. She noticed that 5 soldiers were on the flight and that they declined meals because of the cost. Kathy spoke with the flight attendant and asked her to provide meals to the soldiers at Kathy’s expense, but not to let them know who had paid. About 20 minutes later, the pilot came back to Kathy, said he’d heard what she had done and wanted to pay for half the meals. Kathy handed him a card and said, “Pay it Forward”.
Great story if it ended there…but it didn’t. About a week later, Kathy got a call from Alaska Air Lines. They told her that the pilot has implemented a policy that any soldier on his flights eats for free.