THEY WILL ASK thee as to what they should spend on others. Say: "Whatever of your wealth you spend shall [first] be for your parents, and for the near of kin, and the orphans, and the needy, and the wayfarer; and whatever good you do, verily, God has full knowledge thereof." - Al-Baqarah (2:215)
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Saturday 14 April 2012

Updates here and there…

I am supposed to be on clinic duty every 2nd and 4th Wednesdays of each month, but with Wednesday 11th April declared a public holiday for the installation of the Yang DiPertuan Agong, I had a relaxing Wednesday this week. No hospital or house visits either, but that didn’t mean I took a break from voluntary work. I still had to go to the Buddies Centre to settle some admin matters, including signing some cheques.

And despite not doing any hospital or house visits, I was in contact with a quite a number of clients and/or their families.

After visiting Sofie at the hospital last week, her sister called me up to ask if I could help get a wheelchair for Sofie. I just told her not to worry about it as we have our Clients Welfare Fund which we could use for this purpose. But I didn’t even have to use the funds. All I did was update my FB status with Sofie’s plight and within less than an hour, I had donors offering to sponsor the wheelchair for Sofie.

So on Monday, off I went to search for a wheelchair. Given Sofie’s fragile condition, I got one which was light in weight. Got it at a discounted rate too…

Came Tuesday, Sofie’s sister called me again. This time to tell me that Sofie had just been wheeled to the ICU. She was unconscious most of the time, and even when she was awake, she was too weak and in pain that they gave her medication so she could sleep again. I called her son Saiful on Thursday to find out if there was any progress, but according to Saiful, there were no changes. All the children were there too. I don’t want to visit during the weekend, as chances are there’d be many relatives there, so I think I’ll wait till Monday to visit again.

I received a few calls/SMS this week regarding the educational needs of the children of my clients. Rosnah said her daughter needed to buy sports attire from the school. She said if possible she wanted 2 pairs, but I told her we’d only approve one pair. Then Imran sent me a text message – his children’s schools had finally asked for the parents to pay for their PIBG fees. And finally Maya asked if I could bank in her daughter’s monthly pocket money into her account instead of her daughter’s as they were thinking of using the daughter’s bank account for Projek Khas allowances. You see, the daughter, who is now at a fully residential school, is under the Projek Khas programme and the school was asking for the girl’s bank account for them to bank in the allowance. It seems, the bank book will be kept by the school, and so it would be difficult for the daughter to take out her monthly pocket money (the girl is still under our sponsorship programme) if they used the same bank account. I have already done a standing instruction for the monthly pocket money to be banked in direct into the girl’s bank account until the end of the year, so Maya finally decided to open up another account for the girl to be used for the Projek Khas allowance.

Well, at least it is good to know that her daughter has finally settled down at the residential school. Before this, it was like a yoyo situation… sometimes she’s up, sometimes she’s down. Sometimes she’s okay staying at the hostel, sometimes she just wants to go home…

Yesterday, after watching the news about the flood at a particular town, I suddenly remembered that my new client, Nani, stays near the area. I was thinking, if her house was involved in the flood, the damage would really be bad since her house is already in quite a bad condition. So I called to ask, and was glad to find out that Nani’s house was not affected, alhamdulillah.

So lazy me didn’t visit anyone for the whole of last week, but I think next week I’d better check out on a few clients who may need help…

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