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No. 24  Jan. 2010    

    Dear friends,

This year Vietnam was hit by 11 typhoons. One typhoon was so powerful that it destroyed several villages in Central Vietnam. In one small village more than 30 people died. We decided to help the victims with rice, clothes and finances. With the support of you and many people from Hanoi we were also able to rebuild 8 houses. The victims were very thankful and some of them were crying. Our activities were carefully recorded and monitored. We heard of aid-organizations who turned their back when corruption was involved.

             Two of the eight houses destroyed by the storm. We were able to rebuild all of them with your support.

Gathering of volunteers                                                                               Seven of our staff traveled by bus for 22 hours to attend a gathering of 80 volunteers in Dalat. The purpose was to learn from each other. One of our staff got the impression that he should give his coat to another person. It was a sacrifice for him because the weather at that time was cool and rainy. But what a surprise when the next day another person came to him and gave him even a better coat. Can you imagine what this did to him? The teaching during the gathering was great and after four days all the volunteers left motivated and refreshed.

Building a new floor

When we had to repair our roof after our center was hit by a typhoon, we came to the conclusion that it would be better to build another floor first. We are planning to build seven bedrooms with two bunk beds each, a living room, kitchen and two bathrooms for our staff and guests. The rooms on the second floor can be used for expanding our work. We made a photo reconstruction of our center with the new floor on top. Mr.Tuan already made a scaled model. We have contacted the contractor already and hope to start building soon. We have no idea what the construction will cost, but that will be our new challenges for 2010.

Open doors for visitors                                                                                       We had several people visiting us. One businessman from Germany is going to provide a school with solar panels for dis-abled children. Also two ladies from Holland visited us. One of them had not seen our center yet and was very excited. There was also a teacher from the USA. A Vietnamese consultant was impressed by our work and wanted to promote it. We also had a short visit of three deaf Koreans and 10 other Korean students who helped us for one week. Another lady from Hoi An wrote an article about our work. Please click:  Live Hoi An Magazine  

Staff News                                                                                                                                                     Mr.Tuan became for the second time father of a healthy baby boy. Lately he was involved in a serious accident but is recovering. Loc, one of our Katu workers left for a course in shipbuilding and Thanh, who has been translating our newsletter regularly left for a job as tour guide. Trung one of our deaf workers was under heavy pressure and left, came back for a week but was forced to leave again. We welcomed two new deaf workers named Hung and Hiep. They are both from Haiphong, a harbor city in the north. Hung wants to help other deaf people in Danang. He will be staying in Danang with his wife for a couple of years. Please remember our workers. We had a wonderful Christmas party with singing, story telling, presents, fun and eating together.