John Louk

My family had a very difficult day last Friday. We put our dog, Oreo, to sleep after fifteen years with us. My daugher, Kaitlyn, wrote about this on her Facebook page. Since only her Facebook friends are able to read it directly there, I wanted to share what she wrote here: Anybody seen the movie Marley & Me? I bet most of you have. I cried so hard at the end of the movie…(well, I cry in every movie), but this was a heart-breaking, cry your eyes out until you think you've soaked your t-shirt all the way through movie…I never thought I would experience it. Nobody wants to go through that. Maybe you're reading this and you know what I'm talking about because you've been through it before. Maybe you've had a dog or a cat or another pet that you have had to put down. You've experienced that grief of losing something you love dearly. It's hard. I now know, it's more than just hard, it's…painfully hard. Something you have to go through in order to h...

In Seinfeld , the popular TV series from the 1990s, one of the characters, George Constanza, is unhappy about having to buy Christmas gifts for family, friends, and co-workers. George is cheap and devises clever ways to save money. So he makes up a charity and gives everyone a note card that simply says, “A donation in your name has been made to The Human Fund.” George’s scheme works pretty well until his boss gives him a check from the company for $25,000 as a donation to The Human Fund. Christmas is not a time to be cheap. It is a time to be generous. The question is, to whom are we being generous? I said last year that I would offer this challenge now: let us consider what we spend on Christmas gifts and give at least an equal amount of money for mission. In our culture, from 1999 to 2006 the average spending on Christmas gifts was around $1,000. In 2007, Christmas spending dropped a little to $859. Last year was a big change as most people planned to cut their gift spending by 50%....