This blog and so many others dwell on taxes, and how to avoid them. It is easy to forget that the gift of our time is tax free – and can be a much more meaningful gift than money.
Joplin, Missouri is my birthplace. Although I have not lived there since I was very young, for a variety of reasons I still consider Joplin “home.” Not only is the country beautiful, but the people are down to earth and genuine. I believe there is a wonderful Easter story within a recent news article in the Joplin Globe detailing how some non-resident volunteers, cleaning up in the aftermath of Joplin’s May 22, 2011 EF5 tornado, fell in love with the town and moved there.
One such story is Michelle Tatela, a Chicago pediatric nurse turned volunteer, who pulled up stakes and moved to Joplin after the tornado:
She applied for a traveling nurse job in Tulsa, Okla., and an Oklahoma nursing license, put her two Labradors, Morgan and Maisy, in the back of her Jeep, and found a Joplin apartment — nothing fancy, just some place to shower, leave the dogs and sleep, and began calling Joplin home.
“Some thought it was crazy, others saw it coming. My brother said, ‘You just need to move there,’” she recalled.
Tatela has spent her days ever since doing “whatever needs to be done — painting, taping, mudding, organizing college kids, bringing supplies to the job site.”
“I get paid,” she said, “just not with money.”
“The people here are exceptional. I feel like there is something here special that you don’t find everywhere else. They are kind and appreciative. They don’t focus on what they lost, but what they have. It is teaching me lessons and I have grown in a way I’ve never grown before. You can’t put a paycheck on that.”
“We, as people, seek out the company of others like us,” she said. “I have found that here. I fit in.”