A UPS driver stopped after delivering a package in the middle of his busy shift in a Georgia neighborhood earlier this month, to wish the parents of a newborn baby boy well.
A simple act of kindness has now led to a lifelong friendship.
A UPS driver stopped after delivering a package in the middle of his busy shift in a Roswell neighborhood earlier this month to wish the parents of a newborn baby boy well.
He also shared that he too had a son around the same time.
“If this is the ‘it’s a boy house’ who had the, I forget the name of the bird, I hope all is going well with your newborn. I had a child around the same time you guys did and I just hope everything’s going good. God bless, happy holidays,” said the UPS employee, later identified as Dallen Harrell of Marietta, in a Nest doorbell video.
The doorbell camera belongs to Jessica Kitchel and her husband. “I just played it back and saw his message was just completely blown away by it,” she said to us Thursday. “I think I needed it the most in that moment. Just encouragement.”
Kitchel posted us to social media where it was quickly shared and viewed nearly 60,000 times.
Days later, Kitchel and Harrell finally met.
“I was so excited to talk to him and just thank him for what his message meant to me,” said Kitchel.
However, that meeting was just the beginning. Since Harrell just had a baby boy too, Kitchel wanted to thank him for his compassion.
“I asked him if he had a baby registry he could share with us and him and his fiancé had not had a baby shower,” she said.
She posted his registry links online and nearly everything Harrell and his fiancé needed was gifted to them by people they didn’t even know.
“Complete strangers. I wouldn’t know them from a can of paint. Just God’s vessels,” said Harrell to us Thursday afternoon.
He says he also received a promotion at work. “My life kind of turned around and changed overnight.”
But the biggest gift, they both say, is a friendship they’ve formed, that all started with less than twenty seconds of kindness. “I don’t want it to be a one-time deal. Not a season, for sure, a lifetime,” said Harrell.
Kitchel says there’s also a bigger lesson we can all take away from this. “It’s so easy right now to focus on what isn’t going right and the fact that we all got to see somebody just take a second in their day and show an easy act of kindness, that really meant a lot.”
https://www.facebook.com/111309755114271