Eggs, Books, Thanks, and Camp

A Mother's Thanks     We are giving tuition support to 160 high school students in Qinzhou, China who can't afford tuition. I received an interesting report from their tuition gathering on February 19th. Mother Asks to Speak A mother traveled to the tuition meeting and asked to speak to  the assembly. Anna Liu, our administrator there, gave this report of what the 40 year old mother had to say.      " I talked about Blessing Hand Charity as usual, and at the end of my speaking, one of the volunteer teacher said, "One of the blessing Hand student's mother hopes to speak". I was so surprised and also very happy. I invited her to the speaker's desk.   She said she appreciates Blessing Hands from America that helps her son, whose name is Chen Guoding from No. 6 Middle School. She said she doesn't have any job now but goes out to collect old things to sell and earns a little money.           Her son said he hopes that his mother could say "thank you" at the meeting, and he doesn't care if his mother doesn't have any job but to pick up the old things to sell. He feels honor toward his mother. She said she hopes her son and all the Blessing Hands students will study hard to be useful persons and give their love to those who need help as Blessing Hands does. After her speech, all the students gave her a big hand." You can support Chen Guoding and receive his mother's thanks.  Chen is the only son of his parents and will graduate in 2014 from high school.  He and over a hundred other students in Qinzhou need $160 a year to pay their tuition. You can choose one to sponsor at this link.  You can give online at this link or send a check to Blessing Hands, 106 Timber Lane, Morehead, KY. In This Issue Qiao Danmei Books given to Fuming School Lin Wang School Thank You Letter Qiao Danmei I am Qiao Danmei from class 1, grade 2, in No. 1 Higher Middle School in Anlong.  I am grateful to receive your help. Thanks to your help, I can continue my school work. As a result, it encourages me to study harder to reward society and the people who are warm hearted.  It's said if you give me a drop of water, I'll reward you with many springs.  I believe when I grow up, I'll be a person like you to help other people who are poor. I don't think you will be disappointed with me. I had many dreams when I was young.  I wanted to be a teacher, a doctor, a nurse, or a policewoman. But now I have a new goal to be a designer. Maybe it will be changed later, but no matter what it is, I must study harder for now on to make it come true. Finally, so many thanks to you! Best Wishes! Yours, Qiao Danmei  Books for Fuming School Books Given to  Fuming Primary School     Yaya Luo recently delivered new books to the library of Fuming School in her home community. The locked bookcase pictured below contained the old books, which were all the school had. They requested our help to get more and newer books for their school. They had read all their few old books. Old books in  Library New Hard Back Books                        The Fuming Library got new hard-back books worth  $265.  The school also asked for musical instruments needed for special music unique to their culture. They were preparing for a minority celebration, Double Three Festival on March 3rd. They used the new musical instruments on that day.  Blessing Hands gave them $200 for these instruments.  Your donations have made these gifts possible.  Thank you! Lin Wang School Kids  Benefit from Donations I received pictures recently of the students at Ling Wang School receiving eggs, boxes of pencils, and exercise books for their Chinese language and character classes as well as their math exercise books.   We use the money collected from cash jars in Chinese restaurants to fund this. If you want to place a jar in your favorite Chinese restaurant contact us for a jar insert featuring these kids. This is one way to help our kids when you can't give yourself.  Vacation Bible Schools also collect money for extra food for the Lin Wang School kids. I love it that kids are giving to kids. If your vacation Bible School would like to have a part in this Food For Kids campaign, please contact us  about sending a short video about the school and kids.    Receiving Eggs Kids Showing Workbooks Kids Receive Extra Food and School Supplies         Cash Jars and Vacation Bible School Donations Made this Possible Exercise Books Given out        Kids Receive Eggs      Ann McAfee, Counselor with the Community School of Davidson Summer Camp Plans The Community School of Davidson  Will be Camp Volunteers   This private school near Davidson, North Carolina  emphasizes a "multi-disciplinary and integrated curriculum that is relevant, challenging and exploratory". They have taken their older students to China for the last two years to participate in service learning.     This year, five adults and 11 students from Davidson will come to our Friendship Summer Camp as campers and teachers.  They are eager to help in any way with service projects, square dancing, zumba classes, culture classes, and sports.      We expect our Blessing Hands students to enjoy the interaction of cultures that will result from US students learning taiji and calligraphy while they learn English songs, dances and holidays. They will all enjoy basketball, an English movie,  bicycle outings, and making new friends. We are planning for 60 campers (ages 15-18) at a cost of $50 each.    Our kids can't afford the camp expenses of room and board, however, so we will be asking sponsors of the high school students if they want to help their sponsored child attend the Friendship  Summer Camp.    We will also be asking for contributors to help us with other expenses like insurance, salaries of cooks and gatekeepers, and the school's reward for use of their campus. We expect a budget of approximately $4,600 for camp expenses including the campers' expenses. Teachers will be donating their time, but we will pay some translators a small salary.    Please help our kids go to camp and support international friendship.  You can give $50 for your sponsored high school student or help with the general expenses of the camp at this link.  Checks can be sent to Blessing Hands, 106 Timber Lane, Morehead, KY 40351, USA.    If you want to help pay the airplane fare of one volunteer teacher of drama, who can't afford her ticket, that would be great too.    Blessings,                                                                        Give to our camp at this link.  Betty Cutts Director of Blessing Hands

Subject: Friendship Summer Camp

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Summer Friendship Camp We are getting excited about our Summer Friendship Camp in Yangshuo. We have been working on the schedule the last two days and have included four blocks of time including English Culture, Personal Development, Extra-Curricular activities, and Sports.      The Extra- Curricular activities will include music, art, dance, drama and storytelling/public speaking. English culture includes American geography, history and heroes, American festivals and holidays, the American educational system, and American customs like weddings.     Personal Development will have classes on physical and psychological health, future goals and career planning, living a successful life, social skills and problem management and finally communication and speech. We thinks any teenager would benefit from classes like these.      Our fun activities will include a bicycle field trip, scavenger hunt, service projects, zumba and tiaji exercises, a talent show, square dancing, an English movie, and story telling.  We can use 38 volunteers with half of them being translators. Some teachers could teach more than one class, but it would be great to have different teachers for each class.       We already have our high school campers, so we are now looking for our 30 volunteer teachers and 8 college counselors. Half of them need to know Chinese to translate for the other teachers and counselors.  If you want to apply, please contact us quickly. We will need to get tickets ordered for those coming from the USA. Plane fare might be as high as $1,700 and another $500 will be needed for visas, in-country fights and travel, food, and accommodations. Translators will be paid a small salary (a little over $100).    Contact us for more information. MOREHEAD TODAY TV PROGRAM         Our last three interns, Megan Mraz, Laura White, and Leanna Gilliam have been a great assets to Blessing Hands on the Morehead State University Campus. They has raised awareness about our Blessing Hands kids and spoken in the community and on campus about Blessing Hands.       Recently the college TV program, Morehead Today, included Blessing Hands as the feature in their segment. Crystal Zhao was the excellent hostess. She especially wanted the story of our internship and interviewed Leanna and myself.  I have included the link to the program on youtube.       Leanne had so much fun last summer that she is going back to help with the camp this summer. China affects people that way. Kasey Towles and her son John Randall are returning also along with Eric Zhang. That is almost our whole team from last summer.  Morehead Today 2-15-2012      Water Purifier   Final Sum Raised by Christina Zhang for Water Purifiers    Cupcake Party Volunteer   We have the final amount, $4,262.65, raised for the water purifiers by Christina Zhang and her family. This amount will buy and install two purifiers and also leave $703 for the HIV training seminar in Du'an this summer. We also have a pledge for the last purifier, which will finish our project for the eight rural schools.    We thank you all very much.    Betty Cutts Blessing Hands Director 606 784 4785