I'm a relatively private individual here, and I typically do not disclose much about where we live. Well, we live in Oklahoma. Oklahoma City, in fact. As I'm sure many of you are aware, on Sunday May 19th and Monday May 20th, the Oklahoma City area has been hit heavily with tornadoes, with today (the 20th) being the worst. Early estimates are that at least an EF4 tornado two miles wide has torn through Moore Oklahoma this afternoon leaving a nearly 20 mile long path of destruction in a suburb of 50,000 people over the course of about 40 minutes.
Oklahoma tornado: 51 killed, 120 injured, including 70 childrenMy wife and I are safe... however, there's an entire chunk of our city lying in ruin tonight and these people will need help. There's clearly not many Oklahoma native mustachians around, but our community is insanely large and I would like to ask you for your help.
This is where the Throw Down the Gauntlet portion of this post comes into play.
The
Communications Superguide has been read over 46,000 times. It is the most read thread on these forums, and has the second longest post count only to the
Say Hi thread. I
know I've helped a lot of people here over the past year and change save hundreds and thousands of dollars on their communications bills.
Now it's time for you to return the favor.If you ever found the information valuable?
Give some money for relief efforts.If you saved some money on your cell phone bill?
Give some money for relief efforts.If I ever helped you out directly and answered any of your questions?
Give some money for relief efforts.If you feel fortunate to be alive?
Give some money for relief efforts.I will be happy to see you give
whatever you can or are comfortable with, but the true challenge here is the amount I'm going to try and encourage you to give. That amount?
At least one month worth of savings between your old total communications bills and your now cheaper ones. That means if you started out paying $250 a month for your cell phones, internet, cable TV and home phone when you showed up here and now pay $100 thanks to the resources posted here, I want to challenge you to donate at least $150 to one or more of the charities I'll have linked below.
I'd encourage you not to disclose your amounts given or to whom, as this is something I view as
Tzedakah. I also request that you do not attach my name or the MMM community to the donations either out of respect to me and the spirit desired for you to give in, though clearly I will not stop you if you insist on doing so. Finally, I request that you do not earmark your donations for any specific subsection of relief efforts and give to the general funds instead, as I don't want to see new houses with five bathrooms built because some wisenheimers decided to earmark their donations solely for rebuilding homes while say infrastructure goes underfunded and unfinished. Got it? Good.
Known charities and organizations taking tornado disaster relief donations (last updated May 23, 2013):
American Red CrossBaptist General Convention of OklahomaCrossings Community ChurchFeed the ChildrenOklahoma City UniversityRegional Food Bank of OklahomaThe Salvation ArmyUnited Methodist Committee on ReliefUnited Way of Central OklahomaThe
Daily Oklahoman also has a detailed list of aid organizations available
here.
Also, for any local mustachians, I'm willing to help coordinate with any volunteer efforts being made in the area. Please PM me here or contact me through
this form if you're interested.
Thank you, and may the L-rd bless you for your assistance.