October 18, 2009
On Friday, we attended a wheelchair ceremony sponsored by the Red Cross at a school for special needs children. One young man’s body twisted and writhed as he was put into his wheelchair. I leaned over to his contortion-twisted body and he whispered a distinct and heartfelt, “Thank you.” As another child was lifted into her wheelchair, her body tensed rigid with excitement or fear and her mother and teachers were unable to get her to relax into her chair. Maybe her body will cooperate another day. My heart swelled with gratitude for this wheelchair project as child after child was placed in their wheelchairs. The head schoolmaster told us that before today most of these children have been carried to school on the backs of their parents. I’m sure it will be a relief to many of them to have a wheelchair to help ease their burdens.
From there, we went to The Children’s Palace and viewed a display of teaching objects for blind students. A few years ago, DIC did a white cane project for the blind. That’s probably why we were invited.
We couldn’t stay very long, because we were also invited to Acer Computer’s launching of a new lightweight laptop, which has a long battery life. The Ulaanbaatar East District President Tserennynam, who works for Acer, invited us. It was pretty interesting to see how special guests were treated, seats marked, a press conference held, and special refreshments served while guests mingled with dignitaries. During that time, we met the manager of Acer in Mongolia. He was interested in our Humanitarian projects and said he would like to talk to us sometime about our work.
