My in-laws’ gift to me was this brochure saying a sheep had been donated in my name to Heifer International. I am intensely grateful–I can’t possibly think of any material gift I could have enjoyed more, and Heifer International is one of the best charities out there in terms of using donated funds for the actual purposes the money is raised for.

Tracy Kidder’s book, “Mountains Beyond Mountains” about Paul Farmer, a Harvard doctor who set up a health clinic and school in Haiti, is part of why my in-laws’ choice is so meaningful to me. Farmer is the type of man who, at one point in the narrative, drives through a riot and pulls a man he watched being injured into his car to take him to his clinic for treatment, ignoring the thugs on both sides of the fight and both sides of the car. Someone is hurt. Not to help is unthinkable.

At one point in Farmer’s story, an armed soldier bursts into the compound he’d built, making threats and demanding, So what are you going to do about it?

And Farmer smiles gently and calmly answers, “Treat you and your family when you’re sick.”

That stops the soldier in his tracks. Totally disarms him. He leaves. No more soldiers come.

We can change the world by giving of who we are: Farmer is fortunate in that he can be there in a place like that in person, knowing he is making a difference.  (And he has the courage to do so, which I frankly do not.) For the rest of us, Heifer International is one of those entities that will do so for us. Thank you, Mom and DadH!