Yunnan Leprosy Village: Report on August Leprosy Village Visit

Ping Liang donated $600 yuan to Xu to partially offset his loss.

Shalom Leprosy Compassion Ministry: People with leprosy are sent to isolated villages where they are abandoned and forgotten by society. The Shalom Leprosy Compassion Ministry has a special place in its heart for these people and organizes groups of volunteers to travel to villages plagued with leprosy in order to provide medical, living, and psychological assistance. The Shalom Leprosy Compassion Ministry is located in Kunming, Yunnan.

August is the rainy season in Yunnan Province, while the earthquake at Ludian on August 3rd attracted attention from international media.  Due to the lack of resources, services offered by Divine Grace is limited in Zhaoton city, especially so at its epic center of Ludian county.  Divine Grace asked its volunteers in Kunming to partner with their respective companies or community organizations to provide clothing, food and donations to those in the disaster areas.  In August, Divine Grace visited two rehabilitation villages in Yiliang county : Takeyama rehabilitation village and ArzeYing rehabilitation village.  We use a set of photos below to illustrate these two visits in August:

First, the visit of Takeyama rehabilitation village, Yiliang County

On August 2nd,  Divine Grace received a phone call from Jinyuan Xu of Takeyama rehabilitation village.  He was cheated $1,200 yuan and this loss caused him anxiety, anger and created some health problems as result.  In addition, corn in the field is ready for harvest and they need help.  Therefore, volunteers from Divine Grace decided to pay them a visit. 

Jinyuan Xu was deceived by a woman who claimed she was working for charity.  This woman gained Xu’s trust first and then replaced Xu’s money with fake money.  A normal person can easily identify this is fake money by touching or visual check.  However, Xu’s poor vision and with both hands handicapped is unable to tell the money is real or fake.  This $1,200 yuan was the fund saved by Xu over the years and he planned to ask Divine Grace for assistance when the time is appropriate for a trip to Dali and Lijiang.  Unfortunately now this fund was defrauded.  We condemn this woman for deceiving such a poor, disabled elderly.

Ping Liang felt sad about what happened and comforted Xu.  She explained to Xu how to identify the money is real or fake.  At the same time, Ping Liang donated $600 yuan to Xu to partially offset his loss.  Also promised Xu she will come back again with rice for Xu during the mid-autumn festival.

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Our volunteers were helping harvest corns

An old couple shared hardship, both with vision and hearing deficiency, are optimistic about life and tried their best to live everyday a great day.

Divine Grace reported this defraud to other rehabilitation villages to raise their awareness.  Usually, there are two or three people in this gang of crooks.  They focused on isolated, remote villages, such as leprosy rehabilitation villages.  Normally, the woman from the gang will approach the victim by first helping them with household chores, reminding them to safe keep their valuables.  Once this woman figured out where these elderly hide their money, she swapped the real money with fake money.  Once this is done, these crooks can take time and then move on to look for the next victim.  Divine Grace reminded these villagers to report this to policy as soon as they realized this happened to them, also make them aware of what happened so they can prevent this from happening again.

In recent years, our volunteers were invited by Xu to help harvest corn and had tender corn cooked for lunch. This is something our volunteers feel very happy and enjoyed during their visit. 

Medicines and medical help are the things lacked the most by these four elderly in this rehabilitation village.  Ping Liang gave them some gift which can be used for cloth washing and some commonly used medicines.

An old couple by the name Lao Qiu – a couple shared hardship, both with vision and hearing deficiency, are optimistic about life and tried their best to live everyday a great day.

On Aug 17th, Divine Grace also visited ArzeYing rehabilitation village.  The main purpose of this visit is to bring medicines to the villagers. We’re unable to show what happened from this visit due to the photos we took were deleted by accident. These are the Divine Grace activities in August. In Sept, we made arrangements to build shower room for SweiGou rehabilitation village, in Xundian County.  We’ll continue to visit two other rehabilitation villages to bring the loving care from Transparent Fish Foundation and from volunteers to more rehabilitation villagers.

Original article written by Ping Liang, translated by Joe Hsu, edited by Yanyan Zhang