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City priest gathers flock to help the blind
In Thach Dinh Commune in the central Thanh Hoa Province, two artisans have created a functional product that saves lives.
A holiday or an ordinary day, it’s the same for one church in Ho Chi Minh City, where the priest and many volunteers are always busy keeping track of donations for the blind.
Providing rice for 40 people in District 1 and 68 people in Thu Duc District on September 1, and for 125 blind people in Dong Nai Province on September 18 - these are just some of the events on Ha Dong Church’s September charity schedule.
Altogether, the church volunteers plan to give rice to 1,516 people at 25 shelters for the blind this month.
The church, in Xom Moi of Go Vap District, has been doing this work for seven years, since Nguyen Thuc became the priest and began calling for donations from 1,000 religious families in the church neighborhood.
He gave away part of his savings from his 21 years in the priesthood to create a rice fund and urged other people to add to the fund.
The fund even attracts donations from overseas Vietnamese whose families live in the neighborhood.
Some overseas Vietnamese donate hundreds of dollars at a time.
In the beginning, the fund could only support blind people at a couple of shelters around the city.
Now it assists people in all of the city’s 21 shelters and even aids people in neighboring provinces.
Thuc continues to contribute to the fund from his own savings every time the fund falls short of what’s needed.
Church worker Do Long Thanh said the church once gave packets of noodles and 10 kilograms of rice to each blind person every month.
But due to recent surging prices, the church can only afford to distribute rice, which already costs VND163.4 million (US$9,800) a month.
So far the church has managed to collect about VND10 billion ($603,000) for its donation work.
Thuc said he decided to support the blind after being approached by a blind lottery ticket seller several years ago.
The ticket seller said he had been robbed and asked the priest for some money so he could eat that day.
Thuc gave the seller half the money for the stolen tickets and called on locals to help with the other half.
More blind lottery ticket sellers came several days later, also crying because all their goods were stolen, Thuc recalled.
“I knew there were some fake blind among those but at the same time I realized the blind are the most unhappy.”
“They cannot see the world around them.”
And after seven years as a priest at Ha Dong Church, Thuc has built up a community that is willing to help those poor people, he said.
“I feel relieved,” he said.
VNN
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