Grandmother Lai

Grandmother Lai Guizhen Receives Help for Her Family

Yaya Luo, our administrator in Yangshuo, has sent this report about Grandmother Lai. Blessing Hands is going to be supporting her two grandchildren who lost their father last year. We are also giving Grandmother Lai some supplemental help for her health and support since she is a widow. 

Dear Betty,

  I have given Grandmother Lai Guizhen the money yesterday afternoon. When I arrived at her family in the late afternoon, she was working in the field and planting some vegetables. She was excited and thankful when she was told she would get some money from an American Charity. She was moved to tears. She said a lot of thanks and a lot of words but I couldn’t really understand her because she spoke dialect. She said if you came to Yangshuo next month, she would like you to come to her family. She wants to thank you.

   You can see her eyes were full with tears and red from the pictures attached, she was bowing for thanks, even though I said she didn’t need to do that. She was showing her legs which are just parts of her body that were burned. 70% -80% of her body is covered by that scar.

 Thank you for all of you.

Love you and sincerely with regards,

Yaya

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Help Us Be Recognized   Children and Families Awards 2012    Betty Cutts, Founder- Driector of Blessing Hands   We are seven years old this month! We have helped 937 students stay in school in these years.     GreatNonprofits in partnership with GuideStar.com is hunting for nonprofits to recognize and promote. The awards will identify top-rated nonprofits working to support children and families. If we have at least 10 positive reviews (4 or 5 stars) by June 30, 2012, we will receive exposure to potential donors and supporters via the GreatNonprofits Top-Rated Children and Families Nonprofits List.    If you love our work, then tell the world! You have an opportunity to help Blessing Hands make even more of a difference in many lives.    Won't you help us raise visibility and support for our work by posting a review of your experience with us? All reviews will be visible to potential donors and volunteers. It's easy and only takes 3 minutes! Go to this link and tell your story. With your help, we can help many more students.     We want to hear from students who have been helped, donors, sponsors, volunteers, or parents. If you know us and want to help others, just give us one of the ten positive reviews.    Below you will read one heart warming story that encourages me to keep helping children.   Blessings,    Betty Cutts, Director of Blessing Hands        Xu Family Thank You Letter that  Blessed a Family                                                                4/1/2012   I am one of the students sponsored by Blessing Hands. My name is Xu Liangxiu, and I am in grade 6 in Dutou Primary School.   I am a kid in the countryside, and my family is very poor, so my father has to do a part-time job outside our hometown. I have a younger sister who studies in the same school. Father does not come back home except in the Spring Festival (the most important holiday in China), so it is my mother who takes care of me and my sister.  My family lives in Ti Mountain, about 3 miles away from the school. Every day, we go to school on foot, and my sister carries a used school bag passed down from me. After school, I have to return home right away to help my mom with housework. Because there is something wrong with my mom's leg, I will cut firewood in the mountain during the holidays to support my family.   Thanks to your help, our living conditions have improved. I bought a bicycle, which became a very convenient tool from and to school. I also bought a new school bag and some writing material for my sister. I wanted to buy some medicine to relieve my mother's pain in her leg, but she refused in order to make us live a better life.   The money you donated helps us a lot. I will keep your love in my heart forever. Thank you! Xu Liangxiu     The family eating lunch under Liangxiu's grade awards that paper their wall.   As soon as I got this thank you letter I mailed it to Xu Liangxiu's sponsor, who has adopted a Chinese daughter of her own about the same age as Liangxiu. The sponsor, who remains anonymous,   was so touched by the letter that she called me immediately to come get a larger donation for the family. She was especially concerned that the mother should get any medicine she needed.  I told our administrator in Yangshuo, Yaya Luo, the good news.  She knew just how to give the large donation to the family. She opened a bank account in their name and contacted the family. The father had come home to work closer to his family. He invited Yaya to their home, and she was able to teach them how to access the bank money when needed and take photos of the family. The mother had been stricken by a stoke several years ago but has slowly regained some of her abilities.     When I got the photos, I took them immediately to her sponsor's family. We rejoiced together on seeing how much good was being done for a worthy family.  Yaya was blessed too.  Her words are below.           "They felt very surprised and happy when they got the gifts. Thank you for all of you. Thank you for your help. I was touched from you and her family. Thank you for giving me this chance to experience this special time. "                   Steve and Jill Hill Family Philippine Children Receive Love and Food     Recently Blessing Hands had an opportunity to help children through a $1,000 grant to the Steve and Jill Hill family. They have seven sons all under 13 years old.  I have known Jill all her life. When she moved to the Philippines, I told her to find some children to help and Blessing Hands would fund her outreach.     Steve and Jill provided breakfast and supper to four different neighborhoods in Manila. The students who came were given notebooks, pencils, and paper.  I will let Jill tell about it in her own words.    "We really love what we're getting to do here!  One of the highlights for us so far was an outreach we held just two weeks ago.  We were given funding through Blessing Hands charity in Kentucky to minister to the children here. So we contacted Pastor Esther Sanchez who Steve had met at a Dunamis School training last fall.  She helps children in her area and has wanted to do a bigger outreach, but didn't have the means to do so. .... So, we went to feed 91 children breakfast and the boys shared a skit about David and Goliath.  Sitting in that room with all those sweet brown faces just  The family Introduced Themselves at the Supper for 150 People Judah Jelped Give Out Food made me well up with tears. " Yisaac Passed Out Suckers!   Steve Hill at the  Breakfast Event Our camp will be at Yangshuo Town  Lower Middle School Friendship Camp in Yangshuo Camp plans are coming along great. We have 22 volunteers coming to teach and translate. The camp will start on Sunday July 22nd and end on Saturday the 28th.    Yangshuo Town Lower Middle School has offered their facilities. The campers will do service projects like painting a mural. They will also enjoy a bicycle treasure hunt, learn to square dance and Zumba, and study personal development and English culture.     About half of our Blessing Hands students have sponsors who have sent $50 to support their campers. We still have 23 more campers who need support. Remember how much fun camps are. Help our kids have that memory.    Please give $50 for a student's camp expenses by clicking this link.  You are such great folks and a blessing to all our students.  Please tell others about how Blessing Hands has blessed you, your family, or your sponsored student. Give us a 7th birthday gift.  I would love to read your comments, and it would help Blessing Hands be listed on the Children and Families Award List for 2012.  It only takes a few minutes.  Sincerely,                             Go to this link to tell your story. Betty Cutts Blessing Hands 106 Timber Lane Morehead, KY 40351

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

Friendship Summer Camp

Friendship Camp Summer Opportunities Friendship Summer Camp in Yangshuo Betty Cutts and Zhang Gongwen     The Yangshuo Education Department, Blessing Hands, Yangshuo County Government, and Sister Cities of Morehead are cooperating on a summer Friendship Camp in the middle of July 2012.      We are excited about this opportunity for our two Sister Cities to get to know one another better.  You can support this camp with your gift at this link. Apply to be a Camp Volunteer Li River in Yangshuo Come to China    We are looking for volunteer teachers and college students to be our counselors at the Friendship Camp. If you can teach or have talent, come share with our Yangshuo students.  Contact us for more details and apply before February 20th.     Our tentative plans are to have camp for a week with our Blessing Hands students, but we also plan to make room for other students, who can pay the camp fee, which will be about $50. US high school campers are welcome, if their parents are teachers or they are traveling with an adult. It would be an opportunity for students to exchange culture and language.     Volunteers will get their room and board free at the camp unless teachers want to stay in hotels at their own expense. College student counselors should be at least 19 and willing to pay their own way to China and sleep with students in the school dorm. The camp will be at a high school campus in Yangshuo.  Beautiful Yangshuo    Chinese translators for US counselors or teachers would get a small salary and room and board.           We are now taking applications for four college age English counselors and four college Chinese/English speaking counselors. We will need teachers also according to the talents of those that apply. If the teachers don't know Chinese, then we will also need translators to help the English speaking teachers. If you speak both English and Chinese, weespecially want you to apply to teach.  In This Issue Volunteers needed in China Cupcake Party a Success Chinese New Year Celebration Mayor Tan Quick Links Website Contact us Youtube Channel Blog Donations Cupcake Party Raised Enough for Two Water Purifiers Cupcake Party      Christina Zhang and her family hosted a wonderful Cupcake party with their friends and Blessing Hands supporters in Lexington, Kentucky recently. Donations were received for two water purification units for Yao minority schools in Du'an County. Christina's goal was at least one, so she really was blessed to be able to give two. Now we only lack one more purifier and two more steel tanks. You can still give toward a purifier at this link.     Below you can see a video of a water purifier being installed and another video of the Cupcake Party.  Cupcake Fund Raiser Clean Water Comes To Long Wang Primary Chinese New Year Celebration  Christina Zhang and Erting Pan at the New Year Celebration     I got to see old friends and make new ones at the Lexington Chinese New Year Festival recently. The celebration was hosted by the Kentucky Chinese American Association, which allowed us to have an information table about our Blessing Hands Kids.       Christina Zhang, Eric Zhang, and Erting Pan Scaggs were just a few of the volunteers who helped at the table. The program was wonderful and everyone had a great time.  Mayor Tan of Yangshuo Favors Blessing Hands Mayor Tan Feng of Yangshuo         Mayor Tan Feng of Yangshuo and his delegation visited Morehead in late December. Our board members were able to discuss future projects with him along with the Morehead Sister Cities Board. He gave encouragement for our planned HIV training and Friendship Camp in Yangshuo this summer.    Recently Mayor Tan assigned a liaison person to make it easier for us to communicate with government departments of Yangshuo. Amy Li, who speaks English, will be assisting Sister Cities, Blessing Hands and Yaya Luo with implementing projects in Yangshuo in July. That will make it easier for us to communicate with the schools and medical personnel. Mayor Tan even expressed the desire to volunteer with us after he retires.  Dr. Wang and his daughter, Xinyi with Leanna Gilliam at Liushan School in Du'an in 2011      Dr. Siying Wang has volunteered to teach the HIV training. He is presently a visiting scholar at theUniversity of Kentucky, but his home is Xi'an, China.  He helped us last summer with our Health Assistant Workshop in Du'an. I look forward to working with him and his daughter again. Mayor Tan will ask the medical professionals at their hospitals and Health Department to attend the one and one half day training. It has started off to be an excellent year.  We hope for many more blessings to come. We still have students who needs sponsors, and sponsors who have not given their spring support yet.  You can give on our website at this link!    Sincerely,   Betty Cutts  Director of Blessing Hands