Bryan teacher creates Love Your Neighbor Day for community during MLK Holiday

BRYAN, Texas (KBTX) - A Bryan school teacher is on a mission to bring kindness to our community. In honor of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., she started “Love Your Neighbor Day”.

Fabi Payton loves people. She teaches sixth grade math but has a love for people of all ages.

”We see a lot of images about things and people that are happening way far away and it’s taking us farther away from our goal here as a community to be more focused on us; bring ourselves together, our community, each other, our kids,” Payton said.

She founded the non-profit “I Heart Bryan” and on Monday, wanted to share love.

”With Love Your Neighbor we can honor Dr. Martin Luther King and his work and his great legacy and one of the pillars that he was known for which was love your neighbor,” said Payton.

She put her words into action bringing her husband’s special macaroni and cheese to some new neighbors; The Luther Family.

“Honestly I can’t wait to not make dinner and just feed it to my kids,” said Carly Luther.

They also thanked her with a favorite plant.

”I really think it’s important to just connect and especially in these times you know we’re all kind of divided but we’re also united in this,” said Luther.

Bryan Mayor Andrew Nelson said he’s excited to make this an annual event.

”Love has to drive out hate and the idea is just to love your neighbor and I mean, neighbor means everybody you know. When you say ‘love your neighbor as yourself’ it’s not just your next door neighbor. Everyone,” said Nelson.

”Whatever it is, whatever you have, whatever your gift share it. Try to be kind in some small way,” said Payton.

Some ideas Payton talked about to show love include writing nice notes to people you know or work with or paying for the person’s meal behind you at a drive-thru.

We have our previous story about the effort here.

We have the I Heart Bryan Facebook Page here.

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