How can I Help?

I watched Obama's acceptance speech last night, stunned and weeping with joy. This is an incredible moment in history and I am so thankful I'm here to see it. Think about it. When I was a baby, Martin Luther King Jr was murdered. 40 years later, a black man has been elected to be our president.

His message, though, is important for us to grasp. We can't rest on our laurels and wait for him to "fix things." With two wars, a global economy on the brink of collapse, and anti-America sentiment vocally high, we all need to step up and ask, How can I help? Everyone must work for the change we desired when we voted for Obama. Even people who voted for McCain did so because they believed he was the best person to lead us out of this darkness. No one person, even one president, can get our country back on track and prosperous. It takes a village.

What can you do? Here's an example...

'Good Samaritan' saves crying woman's foreclosed home


Tracy Orr sat in the back of the room and prepared to watch her foreclosed home go up for auction this past Saturday. That's when a pesky stranger sat down beside her and struck up a conversation.

Tracy Orr faced losing her home to foreclosure when Marilyn Mock, a stranger, stepped in to buy it.

"Are you here to buy a house?" Marilyn Mock said.

Orr couldn't hold it in. The tears flowed. She pointed to the auction brochure at a home that didn't have a picture. "That's my house," she said.

Within moments, the four-bedroom, two-bath home in Pottsboro, Texas, went up for sale. People up front began casting their bids. The home that Orr purchased in September 2004 was slipping away.

She stood and moved toward the crowd. Behind her, Mock got into the action.

"She didn't know I was doing it," Mock says. "I just kept asking her if [her home] was worth it, and she just kept crying. She probably thought I was crazy, 'Why does this woman keep asking me that?' "

Mock says she bought the home for about $30,000. That's when Mock did what most bidders at a foreclosure auction never do. Watch why a woman would buy back a stranger's home »

"She said, 'I did this for you. I'm doing this for you,' " Orr says. "When it was all done, I was just in shock."

"I thought maybe her and her husband do these types of things to buy them and turn them. She said, 'No, you just look like you needed a friend.' "

"All this happened within like 5 minutes. She never even asked me my name. She didn't ask me my financial situation. She had no idea what [the house] looked like. She just did it out of the graciousness of her heart, just a 'Good Samaritan,' " Orr says. "It's amazing."

Not many of us have the cash to buy someones home back, but there are things we can do every day to help our neighbors, even something as simple as dragging the garbage cans out to the curb for the little old lady with arthritis who lives across the street. Our own food cupboards hold less than last year, but if we each give just one thing to the food bank their shelves won't be empty. Actions small and large are what it will take to create the change Obama talked about.

Queen Teen is currently going through her clothes and toys to find the things she doesn't play with or wear anymore so that "another child can have something new." This is a person who doesn't have a clear understanding of who the president even is. All she knows is that she wants to help someone.

Regardless of who you voted for, lets keep the flame alive and help Obama bring about the change we all hunger for, one tiny step at a time.