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אשריכם ישראל – how fortunate our people are! When we hear of someone who is in need of rachamei Shamayim , we make public gatherings with divrei chizuk to help inspire the community to accept upon themselves to become better in an area of avodat Hashem as a merit for the person to be helped. And this goes on all of the time and everybody happily improves, hoping that Hashem will send a salvation. We should never underestimate the power of those kabbalot . Although down here it may seem like a simple matter, in Shamayim those deeds do wonders. A woman told me, some years back she went to a gathering where rabbis were speaking about the importance of tzniut – modesty. At the end of the speeches, a rabbi got up and implored the crowd to take something upon themselves right at that moment – a kabbala to improve in tzniut . The person called it like bringing a korban to Hashem. And he said if they would write down their kabbalot on a piece of paper with their Hebrew name, he would submit it to rabbanim who would pray on their behalf. This woman was very inspired to make a kabbala . She saw a long line of people quickly forming to fill out those papers. Her husband had sent her a message that he was worried about her driving home that night, being that the roads were very icy. It was already late at night and she didn’t want her husband to have to wait up for her worrying longer. She said to herself, she would just tell her kabbala to Hashem and ask Him for what she was going to ask the rabbis to pray for. On the way home, she thought about it and she decided that she was going to throw out three articles of clothing which she knew did not conform to the highest levels of modesty. She said, “Hashem, I don’t know what it’s worth, but this is a great sacrifice for me. Please, my grandmother is suffering in so much pain. Please take away her pain in the merit of this korban .” The woman told me that a couple of months before this, her elderly grandmother had been diagnosed with a certain form of cancer. The doctors said that she was too old to go through any type of treatment. They warned that when the cancer spread it would cause her immeasurable pain. And now, she began experiencing that pain and her family couldn’t bear to watch it. Two days after this woman’s kabbala , her father called her from the hospital to update her on the condition of her grandmother. She noted that she is one of twelve siblings and her father rarely speaks to her about what’s going on with her grandmother. This time, however, he specifically called her. He said, “The doctors just discovered that it wasn’t the cancer spreading which caused Grandma this pain. It was some other type of virus which just cleared up. Baruch Hashem, the cancer did not spread at all and she feels great now.” Her grandmother ended up living almost an entire additional year pain free, attending multiple weddings of her grandchildren. The hashgacha here was very obvious. This woman brought a korban to Hashem and Hashem answered her tefila in a miraculous way, and then Hashem showed her that she was the cause of it by having her father specifically call her to tell her that news. Our deeds are very powerful. The greater the sacrifice, the greater the deed becomes.