What a Beautiful World
Some people say the world is corrupted, full of evil, depraved. However the warmth, or the humanity, still continues its powerful heartbeat in this harsh, cold world. Recently, I was impressed by certain people’s love and their strength.
I volunteered my services for an international organization—helping people in foreign land such as Africa—named “World Vision”. The organization’s main role was to assign each Korean sponsor a foreign child who needs financial help. Then the sponsors supported their assigned children financially and developed relationship with the children by exchanging letters. My job there was to translate the letters written in Korean by sponsors into English or the other way around—translating English letters into Korean. Last Monday was the first day for me to go into the office and actually perform my duty. My task was quite simple; yet it was not a trifling job at all.
There was total number of fifteen thousand people in Seoul sponsoring the poor kids. I was astonished by its fairly big number; however this number, although surprising, was not the thing that made me feel the warmness with my heart. There was one letter written by a sponsor with relatively long length and a piece of yellow Post-it on the top. At first I was busy, translating the letter into English; therefore I did not really pay attention to the Post-it. The content of letter was not so unique or different from other letters, including the three common substances that all the other letters included: complimentary comments about the kid’s cute appearance (I guess all the children have sent their own pictures), questions asking for the child’s health, and an apology for writing back so late. As I finished the translation, I looked at the Post-it unconsciously, read the notes, and couldn’t stop myself from being extremely emotional. What that small note saying was very touching. It said that the one who wrote this letter is not an actual sponsor, yet a new owner of the house where the real sponsor was living it. The sponsor had moved out; however the new owner had no way to contact him. Therefore, she, an ahjuma who wrote the letter and the note, received the letter written by 8-year-old African kid instead of the original sponsor. After reading the letter and looking the child’s picture, she felt something deep inside her heart. Then she decided to become a new sponsor for the kid, replacing the original one’s spot.
What a beautiful world it is. How beautiful the people we live with are. She did not pay a significant amount of money. Most of the sponsors, according to the letters, are not very wealthy. Yet they are taking care of the ones who are given less privilege than them, providing the poor kids with financial help with their best. These people do have warm hearts, they do appreciate what they are given, and they are the true happy ones, I thought.