Sorry it’s a little late in the day everybody–here’s your Monday Recap!
This week’s story comes from Robert Kalatschan of Giving it back to kids, one of our distribution partners in Vietnam.
Trung is the eldest child in a family of three children and suffers from spina bifida. This illness has stolen the use of his right foot making him progressively more dependent on others to get around. He attended school until grade four, but has lived as much of his life in hospitals as with his family.
Three years ago, Trung started to feel that he was burdening his family beyond what they could bear. His father lost his job after going blind in one eye and his mother, a street cleaner, had to take on a second job to make ends meet. Trung wanted desperately to help his parents, but, in his own words, “ my legs wouldn’t allow me to.” Depression set in and Trung started to wish he had never been born. “The more my mother had to care for me, the worse I felt about myself.”
“My life has only been better since I was given the wheelchair. I used to really want to help my parents with some little housework but I was afraid to create more work for them so I resigned to stay in one place. Now I can move to anywhere I want and I am very happy since I can help my mother to mend clothes every day and my mother is making more money with my assistance. I feel my life is better now and it is all because of presence of the wheelchair.”
Because of your support people like Trung have gotten a new lease on life. Thank you so much for your continued support-especially over the past forty days of The Big Push. We will be sending out an announcement shortly with all of the final numbers from the campaign and we are grateful in bringing them to you.
Blessings,
Don Schoendorfer
