Dear friends and loved ones: My birthday's
coming up soon. If I were home, I'd be planning a stupid, expensive birthday
party and you'd all be buying me gifts and bottles of wine. A cheaper, lovelier
way to celebrate would be to make a donation to help a healer named Wayan
Nuriyasih buy a house in Indonesia. She's a single mother. In Bali,
after a divorce, a woman gets nothing, not even her children. To gain custody
of her daughter, Tutti, Wayan had to sell everything, even her bath mat, to pay
for a lawyer. 
For years, they've moved from place to place. Each time, Wayan
loses clientele and Tutti has to change schools. This little group of people in
Bali has
become my family. And we must take care of our families, wherever we find them.
Today I saw Tutti playing with a blue tile she'd found on the road near a hotel
construction site. She told me: Maybe if we have a house someday, it can have a
pretty blue floor like this. When I was in Italy, I learned a word - It's "tutti" with
double T, which in italian means "everybody." So that's the lesson,
isn't it? When you set out in the world to help yourself, sometimes you end up
helping Tutti.
For years, they've moved from place to place. Each time, Wayan
loses clientele and Tutti has to change schools. This little group of people in
Bali has
become my family. And we must take care of our families, wherever we find them.
Today I saw Tutti playing with a blue tile she'd found on the road near a hotel
construction site. She told me: Maybe if we have a house someday, it can have a
pretty blue floor like this. When I was in Italy, I learned a word - It's "tutti" with
double T, which in italian means "everybody." So that's the lesson,
isn't it? When you set out in the world to help yourself, sometimes you end up
helping Tutti.
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