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Taiwanese learn from Mother Teresa's Home of Dying

"I learned to handle the patients closely, and that made me think about my relationships with my friends and my family. I thought since I could do so much for a stranger, I should be able to do the same for my loved ones."

Liao Chien-tsung, volunteer

Ten Taiwanese volunteers held a press conference yesterday to share their experience of serving at the Home of the Dying in Calcutta, India.

The Home of the Dying, set up by the late Mother Teresa, aims to serve homeless people who are in poor health and close to dying.

In the spirit of something Mother Teresa once said -- "love is doing small things with great love" -- the volunteer group, organized by the Hoping International Service (和平服務團), served at the home for a week each this month.

The group mainly consisted of young office workers. Two volun-teers said they had no regrets about having given up their new jobs to go to India.

Cheng Kai-te (鄭楷得), who gave up his job as a teacher, spent most of his time in the home taking care of an old man suffering the effects of a stroke and who had lost the ability to speak. Cheng had to learn to communicate with him using a combination of gestures and eye contact, and spent hours and hours trying to feed him.

He said that he hated the job at first because of the strong odor clinging to the patients.

But then he got used to it and even found joy in helping to carry a patient.

"I learned to handle the patients closely, and that made me think about my relationships with my friends and my family. I thought since I could do so much for a stranger, I should be able to do the same for my loved ones," Liao Chien-tsung (廖建聰) said.

"When I returned home my father picked me up at the airport. After I got into the car, I immediately told him that I was grateful to be able to grow up in my family, and I really love him and mom very much," Liao said.

Another volunteer said that he got the chance to reflect on his own life while serving others, and that the patients helped him to see more beauty and love in the world.

"It was like what is described in [E.M. Forster's] A Passage to India, a journey into oneself. And like Mother Teresa once said, beauty was presented through deformity," Ho Po-tsang (何柏倉) said.

The Hoping International Service is recruiting a new group of volunteers to serve at the Calcutta home next year. The tentative schedule is from Jan. 16 to Feb. 4.

People who are interested can e-mail their resume and biography to john0723@ms3.hinet.net or visit the organization's Web site at http://www.motherhouse.org.tw
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