Live to Love

During the birthday celebration of His Holiness Gyalwang Drukpa and His Eminence Thuksey Rinpoche between 16th and 21st of February 2008, one of the day was dedicated for Live to Love. The nuns at Druk Gawa Khilwa (DGK) Nunnery were well-prepared for this event. Before we arrived, they had already done household survey, covering 48 households or 220 villagers living in close proximity to Druk Amitabha Mountain. We had bought 230 blankets with the sponsorship funds and donation received from several followers of His Holiness and many were were active in solicitating gifts for the villagers. We want to thank Dr. Kong Footcare from Hong Kong who sponsored 50 schoolbags for children in the village.

We were divided into 5 groups, 2 nuns who speak the local language were assigned to each group to help us. Each group had a meeting before visiting the different households. Most of the households have barely anything, except mud-made houses without electricty, just the basics. The completion of the clinic on Druk Amitabha Mountain eventually will help many villagers, as we could see quite a number of sick adults and children.As this visit was not announced to the villagers, they were taken by surprise, seeing us bring blankets, schoolbags, stationeries and many other gifts to them. One of the groups met a teenaged boy whose mother was quite sick. He laid her in the sun so that she could feel some warmth. They had no money to see doctor. Our members gave some money and one of the Hong Kong Sangha took out his jumper and offered to her. The boy was in instant tears. Of course, that moved everyone a lot.

Villagers there generally live in an extremely difficult environment. Because the soil is not fertile enough, the best crop to grow is corn. They dry the corn and ground them into powder, which is the main staple food. Wangi who works at Druk Amitabha Mountain suggested that we should offer each family a sack of rice, because rice is such a luxury that a taste of it in a year would make so happy to be alive. We later managed to raise some funds among ourselves to buy rice for the villagers.Later on, Jigme Yudron, the nun who was in charge of the household survey, told us that more villagers came for help, and it seemed we had not covered about 50 extra households. As our programs were coming to an end, we requested Yudron to continue with the survey and we would leave some of the balance of the sponsorship funds for buying the necessities for the extra households.

Everyone unanimously felt tremendously encouraged to put our energy into helping those less fortunates. Some villagers even offered their home-grown organic oranges to us, and some even entertained us with their singing. This is indeed the spirit of LIVE TO LOVE!This is just a very brief report. Some of the participants may leave their thoughts and comments later on.