Smile encouragement to your friend as you share the satisfaction of working together on a special project. It could be cleaning out a closet, collecting clothes for a rummage sale, painting the church office for the new minister.

Maybe you have just raked up thousands of evergreen cones after a great wind on the west coast. It is time for a nice hot cup of your favourite and some encouragement.

Tea is another product on the list of Fair Trade goods along with coffee, sugar and cocoa. I have some of all these in my cupboard shelves. Yes, it costs a bit more to buy fairly traded products, but I am encouraged by the fact that my money is helping others while buying these good things for me and my friends.

 I like to associate with people who have a positive outlook on life in general. That does not mean that they ignore problems, but rather that they recognize them and try to improve the situation as much as they can.

 There is a picture of me at age five in a train station waiting to board the train with my great aunt. I am wearing a navy jacket and tartan skirt with a Scottish cap tipped to the right on my head. My face looks hopeful in wonderment.

 I have always been curious about how things work, about why, about what other people think. That old saying, curiosity killed the cat is followed by satisfaction brought it back. Curiosity keeps our minds actively pursuing the why or how of something.

Words of appreciation or congratulations enter your body in a similar way, filling you with warmth and power. You feel energized.

I like coffee. When I was too young to drink coffee, I could have a teaspoonful on my vanilla ice cream for dessert. Yum! That was the beginning of my lifelong love of black java. Before I paid attention to the coffee production process, I bought the kinds advertized widely, the well-known labels.

Then I heard about Fair Trade. The message was about my money helping other people in the world. The farmer who grows the coffee, the pickers who gather the beans and the packagers work together in collectives. They share the expenses and the money from sales. When I buy a bag of dark roast, I know that the farmer and all the other workers who dealt with those beans made a decent wage. I want others to treat me fairly. Therefore, I use my money to buy wisely and treat the producers fairly.

Fair Trade encourages farmers and producers to be proud of their work. They know that their product is good for the people drinking that coffee. Encouragement for farmers warms their bodies just as the coffee warms mine.