Mrs. Wu is fifty years old. Her husband ended his life by jumping into the dam seven years ago, because he was diagnosed with terminal liver cancer, and they could not afford treatments at the hospital. Mrs. Wu’s heart broke. She wanted to join her husband in death because she could not live without him. Traditionally, the husband is responsible for more labor than the wife in the small villages, the main support.
Mrs. Wu felt her life was over and she was completely helpless. But her two son’s crying woke her up. She knew she had to be strong for those two little boys. They had lost father already, they could not lose mother as well. At that time, her older one was nine years old and the younger one was only three. She could not remarry because no man would want to marry a widow who has two sons. [The sons would carry on their biological father’s name, and under the One Child Policy, she could not have any more children. Any man who would marry her would become a “bare branch” – the end of his family line.]
She overworked all the time – carrying on her responsibilities as a single mother of two young boys, and at the same time, trying to do her husband’s farming job and provide for the family. Still, she could hardly make ends meet.
She developed high blood pressure, suffered a stroke and become disabled during the spring of 2014. She is now confined to a wheelchair.
Mrs. Wu cannot believe that kind people from overseas are willing to help her and give money to her without asking her do anything. What kind of God do these people believe in? She wants to know this God, too.
Reggie Littlejohn, president of Women’s Rights Without Frontiers, stated: “My heart broke when I learned of the incredibly hard lives of the elderly widows in China’s remote villages. They have nothing, and no one gives them anything. Their husbands often died leaving a mountain of medical bills behind. For some of them, their husbands committed suicide when they learned they had a terminal illness, as they knew that they had no money for treatment. Some of these widows are themselves disabled and confined to a wheelchair. Some of them have contemplated suicide.
“So I decided to launch our Save a Widow Campaign,” Littlejohn continues. ” We are already saving dozens of widows from grinding poverty and from the feeling that they have been abandoned by everyone in the world. We come directly to their door to offer them encouragement and support to help make ends meet.” Read More
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