Kids really love the garbage man. I don’t know if it’s the massive truck that they’re enamored with, or if kids, who somehow find unusual joy in getting dirty, just feel like they’ve found their people when they see the garbage man.

Whatever the case, the bond between the people who collect our trash and our children who create it has a way of warming our hearts and going viral.

Four-year-old Rosie Evenson and her two sisters live for Thursday morning trash pickup. It’s been a standing date between the girls and their garbagemen for years. The girls’ mom, Angie, says that every week the kids would “stop what they were doing and rush to the window to wave to the garbage men.”

Angie Evenson

Brandon Olsen and Taylor Fritz are the guys on the truck in the Evenson’s Blue Earth, Minnesota, neighborhood. They look forward to their weekly greeting as much as the kids look forward to giving it. “The guys would always go way out of their way to wave big,” Angie explains. “You could tell they always made an intentional effort to look for the girls.”

Brandon and Taylor loved their bond with the girls in the window so much that last year they delivered Halloween candy as a token of their friendship, and gratitude for the waves.

Brandon Olsen

In return, the girls all drew and decorated pictures for their garbagemen friends. And the next Thursday morning—like clockwork—the guys showed up to collect the trash. Angie gave them the drawings along with a short note.

Unlike the pictures from her girls, the note wasn’t a “thank you,” but instead some heartbreaking news.

Brandon Olsen

Angie’s note told Brandon and Taylor that the girls may not be at the window every Thursday now because Rosie had been diagnosed with stage 4 kidney cancer.

“I wrote a little note saying, ‘Our little 3-year-old, Rosie, was diagnosed with cancer and has treatments on Thursdays, but keep looking for us even though sometimes we will be gone,’” said Angie. “I just wanted them to know we weren’t stopping waving at them.”

Brandon, who has three young kids of his own, said he was devastated to read the note. “This family forever changed my life—I read the note and was in near tears,” he said. “Being a father, it’s scary to think, ‘What if it were me in that situation?'”

Angie Evenson

After immediately brainstorming ways they could help the Evenson family, Brandon and Taylor approached their boss. They asked if they could donate their own trash pick-up service (which is an employee benefit), to the family for a year.

Their boss and general manager of Hometown Sanitation, Mike Johnson, was overwhelmed and completely inspired by their selfless offer.

“When Brandon and Taylor approached me with the letter that Angie had written and asked if they could donate their free service, I was immediately touched and wondered what we as a company could do to help,” Mike said.

He decided that Hometown Sanitation would donate the year of free garbage service to the family.

“We realize it’s just a little bill,” Mike explained. “But not having to worry about that one thing—we just thought that it might be helpful.”

Brandon and Taylor presented the news to the family with a heartfelt letter from “the Crew at Hometown Sanitation.”

Angie Evenson

“As parents ourselves, we can only imagine what this is like for you,” the letter read. “We want to wish you the best of luck as you fight on and battle through…stay strong, fight hard, stick together.”

Angie says the small act of kindness was anything but small for their family. “What they did made us feel like we were not alone,” she continued. “It was just a simple gesture, but to us, it was huge.”

Angie Evenson

Rosie is still battling her way through, but it’s no surprise that her smile gets a little bigger on days when she gets to see her friends, the garbagemen.

“To them, they are still just their friends the garbagemen,” explained Angie. “And I love that their relationship has remained unchanged. I love the simplicity of the friendly smile and the wave—and, as a mother, I love seeing that there are still good people out there.”

Though Rosie is kicking cancer’s butt, and finished with several rounds of chemotherapy and radiation, she’s only about halfway through her cancer treatments. Doctors say the Evensons can expect a long and uncertain road ahead.

Angie Evenson

“Everyone tells us, ‘Oh, you’re so strong.’ But we feel so weak,” she explained. “But the little things that people do carry you along, and it’s kind of like you borrow the strength from other people.”

The family has started a GoFundMe site to allow others to help with the expenses associated with Rosie’s treatment, and our prayers are with all of them.

Growing up, one of my family’s Christmas traditions was filling shoeboxes around Thanksgiving to donate to Operation Christmas Child.

Churches and organizations all over the nation partner with Samaritan’s Purse to send small toiletries, school supplies, and toys or activities to children in third-world countries at Christmas.

According to their website, the organization has collected and delivered more than 135 million gift-filled shoeboxes to children in more than 150 countries and territories since 1993.

In the year 2000, 7-year-old Tyrel Wolfe and his family participated in the project. The young boy from Idaho picked out and packed items for a young girl his age, then included a photo of himself sporting his cowboy getup with a rustic cabin backdrop.

Tyrel Wolfe

For Tyrel, the project was just a moment in time. He’d had fun packing it up and thinking about the kid who would receive it, but once it was returned to the church and sent overseas, it never crossed his mind again.

But for one little girl in the Philippines, the gift completely changed the trajectory of her life.

Tyrel Wolfe

Almost a decade had passed when Tyrel received a Facebook friend request in 2009. It was from a young woman named Joana Marchan, whom he’d never heard of. He ignored the request and moved on.

Two years later, the same woman sent him another request.

Curious this time about who she was and why she was interested in being friends with him, Tyrel sent Joana a message asking how she knew him.

She replied, telling him that the shoebox gift he’d sent 11 years ago had meant so much to her, she wanted to connect with him.

It turns out, she’d even tried writing him a thank you note years before, but it got lost in the mail.

“I was curious as to what he was like now,” Joana said. “Was he going to college like me?”

After being reminded by his mother of his involvement in the project, Tyrel continued his conversation with Joana, which quickly blossomed into an unexpected friendship.

The two shared a number of common interests like their Christian faith, and favorite music. Conversation came naturally, and they corresponded for a full year before they decided to meet in person.

Tyrel graduated high school in May of 2013. By then he had saved up enough money working for his dad to fly to Quezon City and spend 10 days in the Philippines.

“I knew I was taking a big risk,” Tyrel says. “I had never traveled alone, let alone to a foreign country before, and I was meeting people I didn’t know or even knew really existed.”

Feeling nervous, anxious and excited, Tyrel could never have guessed that this trip would lead him to his wife.

Joana Marchan-Wolfe

“When I finally got there and saw her, I had to punch myself a couple times because I thought it was a dream,” he says. “I was immediately attracted to her.”

Experiencing how Joana’s family lived opened Tyrel’s eyes to how “blessed” he truly is.

All eight members of the Marchan family slept on the floor of their 10×19-foot house.

“Here in America, a lot of people are blessed with a lot of things, and after seeing Joana’s home, I’ve gained a different outlook on how people live.”