Ngoc Nghia Monastery, Cam Ranh, Khanh Hoa 2024: Compassionate Hands Delivers Gifts and Cash Offerings

On March 9, 2024, the Compassionate Hands team reached Tịnh xá Ngọc Nghĩa in Cam Ranh, Khánh Hòa, and gave gifts and cash offerings to poor families, the elderly and students.

On March 9, 2024, the Compassionate Hands Foundation (Hội Từ Thiện Bàn Tay Nhân Ái) arrived at Tịnh xá Ngọc Nghĩa in Cam Ranh, Khánh Hòa province, on this year's journey across Vietnam. The team had spent the night in Bình Thuận. The next morning the bus drove nearly four hours along the highway to reach the monastery, where local families were already gathered.

The road into Cam Ranh

On the way, the team watched clouds drift past the mountain peaks and sunlight lie across empty sandy hills. The narrator says the land is beautiful, but Cam Ranh is dry, and poor people are still many. In the narrator's words, beside well-off families are others who struggle every day for a meal, and it is heartening that in their hardship kind hands lift them through shortages of body and spirit.

An 85-year-old grandmother

At the monastery, a team member spoke with an 85-year-old woman. She said she receives rice from the pagoda every month, in full, and has never missed a month. Her legs are weak and she needs help to go up and down steps, so she chants the Buddha's name at home. Asked to chant for the group, she recited Nam Mô A Di Đà Phật and then sang for them. The team praised her singing.

Words before the giving

Before the distribution, the team leader, a monk, reminded team members how to give, and the Dharma teacher Quảng Hiếu reminded everyone to understand the meaning of giving and of doing good. He spoke on the Four Noble Truths: the truth of suffering, its cause in craving for things that change and do not last, and its ending, which is to practice letting go little by little of wants that do not belong to us. He added that letting go does not mean ruining one's life, but using each day's breath to do good.

He also spoke about the benefactors in the group. They had travelled far and were tired, yet their faces were bright, because they were about to place gifts, bought with their own money and effort, into people's hands. A smile from the recipient, he said, is enough to melt away their fatigue.

People not on the list

Some people came without being on the gift list. The narrator says the whole team was pained to see their pleading eyes, and the team leader could not turn away. He had everyone sit in neat rows to receive tịnh tài (cash offerings) and goods from the members, funds contributed by supporters overseas.

During the distribution, a student who received a gift spoke:

I promise the benefactors that I will study well so I do not let down their kindness.

A student receiving gifts

Another speaker at the event wished those who do charitable work ever more blessings, so that more people can be supported, and hoped those receiving help would feel gratitude. He said that the spoonful of rice we eat today is something to remember with thanks, and hoped recipients would one day become helping hands for others.

What stays with us

The narrator speaks of the members abroad: the young ones busy with work, the older ones tired, yet all still thinking of the poor in Vietnam. According to the film, this work gives thousands of unfortunate lives new faith and strength to steady their circumstances and look toward a better future. The video closes with the members singing, wishing peace for everyone.