Breaking Good News · Monday 12 October 2026
Monday 12 October 2026 · 1:57
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A little girl's lemonade stand that grew into a five-million-dollar charity for sick children, and the giant tortoises of Aldabra that came back from fewer than a thousand.
The news you usually hear tells you what went wrong today. This edition tells you what went right: two stories of things that were small and fragile, and grew.
A teddy bear that became five million dollars of kindness
Ohio, United States
When Payton Obert was a baby in hospital in Ohio, a stranger's charity gave her a teddy bear. It was a small thing, the kind of gift a family remembers long after the hospital stay is over.
At eight years old, Payton wanted to give that kindness back. So she opened a lemonade stand, and raised seven hundred and sixty-eight dollars to buy toys for children in hospital. That was 2018.
She did not stop there. Today Payton's Lemonade Stand is a registered charity. Every summer, children run lemonade stands in towns across several states, and together they have given about five million dollars in gifts and necessities to children in hospital or in hardship.
One small gift, passed on, became a river.
"Freely have you received, freely give." (Matthew 10:8, The Fellowship Bible)
Sources: Good News Network; Impactful Ninja; inkl.
The tortoises came back
Aldabra, Seychelles
Far out in the Indian Ocean lies Aldabra, a ring of coral islands belonging to the Seychelles. In the eighteen hundreds its giant tortoises were hunted for food by passing ships, until fewer than a thousand were left.
In 1981 the atoll was protected as a nature reserve, and the tortoises were left in peace. Now a five-year survey by the Seychelles Islands Foundation and the University of Exeter has counted about one hundred and eighty thousand of them: the largest number ever recorded. There are now more giant tortoises on Aldabra than there are people in the whole of the Seychelles.
What is protected, grows back.
Sources: Good News Network; CNN; Phys.org (University of Exeter).
Why we share good news
The word gospel means "good news". Every day, all over the world, people are quietly doing good, and creation is quietly healing wherever it is given the chance. These stories are a reminder that the light is still shining in the world, and that it shines in you too.
Think in light. Speak in truth. Act in love.
Presented by an illustrated presenter with an AI voice. Each story was checked against at least two independent sources. Pictures in the video: Rochelle Hartman and Bre LaRow (CC BY 2.0, via Flickr); Nesnad (CC BY-SA 3.0) and Bjørn Christian Tørrissen (CC BY-SA 4.0), via Wikimedia Commons.
