“I’ll never forget the cry of a newborn baby on that cold night,” monk Thich Dam Lan, who is the verger of Bo De Pagoda said. That cry started her journey to save the lives of unfortunate people.

On one rainy night she was awakened by the loud wail of a baby at the pagoda’s gate. She took the baby into the pagoda and warmed her. As time passed, the baby grew among the benevolent embraces of the monks and nuns who took care of her like real mothers.

We were touched when seeing mother Phan Thi Cuc and “her child” Thich Minh Trang. Cuc was paralyzed when she was 10 years old. In 2005 through television, she knew that Bo De Pagoda nurtured many ill-fated children for charitable purpose. She left her home and took a car from Huu Lung in Lang Son Province to Bo De Pagoda and asked to stay at the pagoda to look after the children. “When I came to the pagoda, I was assigned to take care of little Minh Trang who had just been abandoned. Now she is three years old. You see, she is very pretty,” Cuc said happily while embracing her daughter. Although she gets around in a wheelchair she always tries to give the best care to her daughter, devoting all her love and affection to her.

At the pagoda, eight “mothers” with great hearts are nurturing nine children from over one month old to three or four years old who are abandoned or orphaned. When they reach school age, they will be sent to schools like their elder brothers and sisters who have been brought up by “their mothers”. The oldest child who has been nurtured by the monks and nuns since her birth is now over 20 years old. Many of the older children are now married and have stable jobs. Now Bo De Pagoda is fostering four children studying at the universities, majoring in tourism, English language and information technology, 16 children studying at secondary and high schools, 12 children studying at primary schools and three children going to kindergartens. The pagoda is also fostering some mentally retarded children. Nguyen Van Tuan, a ninth grader at Bo De Secondary School in Hanoi , said with emotion: “I am very grateful to the monk and adopting mothers here. I wish to learn more so as to have a happy life in the future”.

Bo De Pagoda is also a hearth of dozens of women with special difficulties, lonely old people and those who had to wander to earn their living. At the pagoda, young children are taken care of by the women who receive the pagoda’s assistance, older children focus on learning at school and

The monk takes care of the ill-fated children.

It is strange that up to six out of the seven children of the family of monk Thich Dam Lan have become nuns and monks and reside in big pagodas in Hanoi and Hai Phong. Monk Thich Dam Lan entered Bo De Pagoda when she was 16 years old. Over 36 years, she and other monks and nuns have turned the pagoda from a desolate establishment lying among reeds into a spacious and beautiful pagoda, a destination for many Buddhist followers. During a meal at the pagoda we were told stories about the unfortunate lives which had been saved by monk Thich Dam Lan and the difficult time of the pagoda. Monk Thich Dam Lan said: “There was a time I had to grow each vegetable that I ate. There was times when the beggars came to ask for rice to eat, the pagoda had nothing to assist them but gave them incense sticks to sell at the market….”

It is the love and benevolence of Monk Thich Dam Lan and other monks and nuns at Bo De Pagoda that have revived the lives of many ill-fated people.