The world of Tzu Chi (Vol.108)

2019 • 03 40 status of residency in Malaysia. At 28, Maria married her Malaccan husband, and was blessed with a son and a daughter. In between taking care of her family and assisting her husband, who ran a cocoa plantation, she hardly had time to keep tabs on the outside world. The newspaper became her only source of information. She first heard about Tzu Chi in 1986, when she came across a piece of news on Tzu Chi’s humanitarian aid in war-torn Afghanistan. She was deeply moved by the selfless and unconditional giving of the volunteers, and silently made a wish to join the ranks of Tzu Chi although she was unsure of how to do it living in a small town in East Malaysia. It was not until a chance encounter in 2002 that she was finally connected with Tzu Chi, thanks to a friend who received aid fromTzu Chi. In recalling the long wait before she could fulfil her wish, she sighed, “Why did I only find Tzu Chi at the age of 59? I must have committed a lot of bad deeds in my past lives that delayed my encounter with Tzu Chi.” Nothing ventured, nothing gained Maria, who is fluent in the Indonesian Fire incidents happen frequently at Kampung Titingan due to the closely built houses, illegal extensions of power supply and the use of low-quality electrical items. [Photograph by Lim Heng Lai] Maria felt sorry upon learning that the children had gobbled up the oranges without peeling because they had not eaten one before. eople