<img src="{filedir_1}father-son.jpg" style="border: 0;" alt="image" width="250" height="167" class="floatleft" />What will your family and friends say about you and how you lived your life when you are gone? What will they say was your personal legacy?

WaterStone recently celebrated the life of one of our donors, and the compelling legacy he left behind. <i>He was a humble and generous man. </i>And though his net worth was considerable, he was willing to take bucket and water in hand to clean up after surgical procedures in the third-world hospital he helped fund.

<i>He was a problem solver and a man of significant hospitality.</i> For instance, having visited Ethiopia on a mission trip and seeing a man in need, he sponsored the man’s visa to the United States and welcomed him as family into his own home.

<i>He was a visionary and a man who trusted His Lord for the results.</i> As an example, he invested in a rundown budget hotel in a poor city neighborhood and a “Retreat/Recovery Campâ€ in the rural outskirts of his city. He responded to God’s plan to use the properties to help restore the homeless and ex-offenders who are typically drug or alcohol addicted. 

If you attended his recent memorial service, you would have left with profound gratitude to God for his life of generosity lived well. If you were to speak with the men and women set free as a result of his investment into the program that helped restore them, you would know their gratitude to God for His boundless redemptive provision … never knowing their human benefactor.

Herein lies the bookends of generosity. God is praised for the generous life of the giver. God is praised by the redeemed recipients as their lives are transformed by another’s generosity. 

<i>WaterStone calls this legacy with generational impact.</i>
 
Be one of the first 25 to contact WaterStone for your free copy of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_Much_Land_Does_a_Man_Need%3F" title="Leo Tolstoy’s How Much Land Does a Man Need" target="_blank">Leo Tolstoy’s <i>How Much Land Does a Man Need</i></a>. Call 719.447.4620 or {encode="waterstone@waterstone.org" title="email"} us today.

For a print version of this article, <a href="{filedir_1}Bookends-of-Generosity.pdf">download the pdf</a>.