Happy Chinese New Year

Blessing Hands Wishes you a Happy New Year   YEAR OF THE RABBIT This is the year of the Rabbit for Chinese people.  We wish you all a great holiday and prosperity in the coming year. Everyone in China will take a few weeks of rest and return to their families. Blessing Hands had a display table at the Lexington Chinese New Year Celebration hosted by the Kentucky Chinese American Association on January 29th.  We met new friends and supporters and shared about the needs of the students and Longfu Hospital. We met some people willing to be sponsors and one who has a medical equipment business in Guilin, China.  He might help supply items for our summer Health Assistant Workshop in  Longfu or help the hospital with badly needed equipment.  Medical Van Needed Funds Coming in for  the Medical Van        We are excited to report that we only lack  $1,645  of our matching funds goal with the hospital to buy a medical van for Longfu Hospital. Four generous benefactors have given $2,900. Help us put the funds over the top by giving on our Website.         We have also received donations of syringes, needles. and bandages from People's Clinic in Morehead. Other donors have given 12 blood pressure cuffs and other items.  We also thank the Rowan County Health Department and St. Claire Medical Center for medical supplies for the health assistant's medical kits. We will still need to buy neccessary drugs in China. Your money donations for drugs would be welcomed.  We will have to buy them in China, since they can't come through customs.     If you speak Chinese or the Yao dialect and know medical translation ,we would welcome  you to join us for our ten-day health assistant workshop. It will be taught by graduate level nurses with cross-cultural experience. We will be using the textbook "Where There Are No Doctors".  Betty and Debby Wang Debby Wang and Eric Zhang  Helped with the New Year Display Table Lucy Liu and Betty Cutts    Many of the people who came by the table had cute adopted Chinese children with them. We had post cards of children's art from Yangshuo to give them.   Chinese children often receive red envelopes of money for Chinese New Year and new clothes. We hope you remember our kids in China at this time of year. For the price of a Happy Meal ($2.75), our kids can eat for a week in their middle schools in China. Give at this link so kids can eat.   We wish you all a Happy New Year  新年快乐   A Thank You Letter Dear  Sponsor,     How are things going? I want to say "Thank you" to you from my heart. I can never pay you Mikey Ying back for your kindness.  Because of your help, I can continue my studies.Thank you very much. I am working hard to learn, to repay your help. My grades now are very good. This year, I took part in the school's New Year's party act!      I have so many great dreams. I know that realizing these dreams will take a lot of time and effort. But don't worry about me. I have strong confidence in myself.  I know if I keep trying, keep working hard, and keep dreaming, I will definitely realize all my dreams. I will be somebody special. But I will not only care about myself. I will contribute to my school, my  hometown, and my country. I will contribute to society. I will use all my abilities and talents to help my family and my country have a glorious future. I will make a difference in this world.     You helped me, I'll certainly try my efforts to help people who need help!   Thank you once again for your help. I will forever be in your debt. Mikey Ying No. 1 Middle School New Blessing Hands Students Qinzhou  Students Receive Tuitions         In Qinzhou we give students their tuition for the year at our January gathering which brings all the schools together. We support 160 high school students there. Anna Liu, our part time administrator, encourages them to view Blessing Hands as their family. She collects clothes from the teachers at her school and gives them to the students. As you can tell from the pictures, they are eager to get the clothes.You can see more pictures of the gathering at this link.  Students selecting gently used clothes  Students being paid Volunteer Teachers       There is good news for high school students in China. The government has begun to give a percentage of especially poor students aid supplements. National Lottery Public Welfare Funds are being used to give some selected high school students 1000 yuan ($153). The poor students apply asking for help. They may only get the help for one year. Maybe next year another student will get the support.  In Qinzhou two of our students were able to get government support, so we replaced them with new students who needed our help. Maybe 30 % of the students at No. 1 High School were able to get supplements.         Loans are becoming available for poor university students with interest paid by the government as long as they are in school. Others are getting grants of 800 yuan ($123), 1200 yuan ($184), or 1500 yuan ($230) depending where their universities are located. This is taking some of the pressure off rural parents and students.    Join with us in helping those who can help themselves and others.  McBrayer Elementary School Receives Sister School Items Five Yangshuo. China and Rowan County Schools in the USA are linked as sister schools.  Recently the librarian, at McBrayer, Ronetta Brown, made a display of the gifts sent to their school by Putao Primary School. The school has sent money to Putao School to buy library books in the past and plans to help them get books this year also. Display at  McBrayer Library