An Appreciation Letter from a Student Supported by Global Ministries Child Sponsorship

This is an appreciation letter from Qinghua Wang, a student support by Global Ministries Child Sponsorship program.  On April 22, 2006, a Disciples-UCC group visited the school where Global Ministries helped to build a new school building.  She read this letter to all donors from our two denominations.

An appreciation letter

Respected guests from the US,

First of all, I would like to express great appreciation on behalf of all those luckily and financially sponsored by you. It says in Chinese: No appreciation is enough for great kindness. But here, I still want to thank you all for your kindness, which has provided us with hope and courage to live a better life.

I lived in desperation. My mom died from HIV infection when I was 8 years old, and my dad was infected with HIV as well. It was terrible for a child at this age. I have had to take all the responsibility of looking after my sicker and sicker dad. At the same time, my grandmother had a severe illness. I experienced even more difficulties. I have to take care of my weak dad and also my sick grandmother while I am going school. Even through this, I will enjoy such a difficult life with the hope you gave to me. Two months ago, my sister, who did labor work in a city, was injured and nearly lost her life. She had no money to pay for medical services, and her boss refused to provide any coverage for her medical care. My dad, in such bad health, had to go there and look after my sister.

It was such a disaster that I am too sad to speak about it. In fact, if I had not received your help and love, I would have lost all my confidence to continue my life. Luckily, the difficulties didn’t affect my study, but strengthened my faith to study harder. People always say that children from poor families take more responsibility earlier. I persisted to study hard and got excellent scores. I didn’t feel lonely and was looked after well by the leaders and teachers of my school. I sensed the great warmth from the community and continue to study even harder and will not disappoint those nice people who gave me love and hope. Your kindness means a lot to me, as great as a mountain. The only thing I can do to reward your kindness is to study hard.

To all of you kind people here, we were all unfortunate orphans before, but now how happy we are since we have so many kind people like you around. You give us so much love, and I cannot express my gratitude by any words. On behalf of all unlucky children, I would like to say, “Thank you, and wish you nice people a peaceful and happy life forever.”

Through you, God’s love reaches those children who are in difficulties and in need.