In this trip, I met a retired doctor from Mainland China who invited me to visit his home village in a remote region in Shanxi Province. The conditions were shocking. There was no piped water supply, electricity was erratic and some families still lived in caves. Middle school graduate teachers would be providing education to the village children. The lack of a readily available water supply caused many health problems and yet it would cost only Forty Five US dollars to pay for the connection of one faucet to each home for this basic need. The farmers could not pay for this from their meager incomes eked out from the infertile farmlands. My husband and I raised funds and we connected water to seven villages with one faucet to each home. We helped out in several other projects including building two new dormitories to replace old 1950s dormitories that were crumbling.
I soon realized that in order to raise their living standards that a good basic education is the vital key. With the help from friends and well wishers, we built the Bo Ai School. We recruited young teachers, trained them, invited mainland and overseas professionals to give seminars, recruited a very experienced principal to oversee the education. Medical and dental teams came from overseas to provide free medical and dental care to the villagers and to the students. To date, I am beginning my eighth year of service to our school and this year to our group of 335 boarding students. It has been a pleasure and I am thrilled to see our students grow in knowledge and character. In addition to an excellent scholastic record and also because of the love, good habits, good character traits that we instill into our students Bo Ai School was declared a Model School of the province. Everyday, I am sustained and encouraged by the love from these students, and of course the love from my husband and from God.
Today, we face the challenge of building the Bo Ai Middle School to provide and continue the very vital middle school education to 350 boarding students through the teenage years.
One year ago in July 2011, as soon as classes had ended, construction workers in hard hats came enmasse with bulldozers and with trucks loaded with materiel. The dawn of the Boai Middle School was at hand.
A year later, the shell of the three buildings for three hundred and fifty middle school boarding students are about finished. Because of the hyperinflation of materials in China and the lower valuation of the US dollar, we need RMB 5 million to complete the project.
The challenge to all of us is to see the completion of the Middle School and I sincerely hope that you would donate to the Boai Middle School Building Fund. God's gracious hand was with us when we built the elementary school and I trust that He will again with our Middle School. Please donate generously.
"We cannot all do big things but together we can all do our part to make this world a better place"(Mother Teresa). We all can be extraordinary people in Bo'ai's history. The challenge to us is to leave a lasting impact in the lives of these dear children.
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