Today is Friday, February 20th, 2009; Karen's Korner #1515
I want to share a story which has happened in our community of which I am only a small part.
I have the honor of being the Wright County Hawk-Eye reporter for the new OUR IOWA magazine. It isn't a hired position. Each of the 99 county Hawk-Eye reporters are supposed to be on the lookout for possible stories in the county which we represent. Then we feed those possible ideas to the magazine editor headquarters based in Ames.
I had an idea for a story: Clarion has a 'special' young man, Danny Schnell, who spends his day gleaning stray bottles and cans; sometimes frequenting businesses to find if that business will give up their treasures in lieu of the inconvenience of getting them to a recycler.
"Dan the Can Man", as he his fondly termed, not only gets rid of annoying cans and bottles, he gives his recycling dollars to worthy causes and spends his 'free time' removing pull tabs to give Ronald McDonald House to help with funding there.
OUR IOWA editors thought Dan would be a good story. I wrote the story (for which I was paid!), but I didn't have the ability to get the quality of photos which the magazine needed for their slick color pages. They hired a local photo studio, for which the studio was paid their normal sitting fee, but telling the magazine they would donate the dollars to Dan for his 'volunteer' work.
The story has just been published in the February/March issue. The studio has given Dan the money, as they promised. Danny gave the money to the Marys and Marthas, an ecumenical group of gals in our community, which does hand out, hand up, and pat on the back deeds.
"Dan, is there something special for which you would like the $100 plus to go?" we asked.
"Yes, I would like for it to go to some high school senior in our community who might have trouble purchasing nice photos this spring, summer, or next fall," was his reply.
And the money? It's going back to the photo studio.
Dan is part of God's plan; God knew that if I give, and you give, and Dan would give......we would never have any needs. The best part is that a high IQ is not necessarily needed to be something special to God, nor to be able to do His Will.
It can sort of come naturally.
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