Because the heat if the summer is past, and the weather is now cool, bright beautiful, we thought it a wonderful chance to take the children back to see their parents who have leprosy. The Church of the Lepers was filled with parents and when we arrived with the Ranch Wagon bulging with tiny tots and two other cars loaded. The children stand on the church platform and their parents admire them and talk to them. It is tragedy and happiness, sweetness and bitterness, longing and fulfillment, it is heartache and heart-balm, all mixed up together. your child and yet not be able to touch her, to have a child and yet see her from afar, to hide a hurt down deep in your heart that someday your child might to own you as parent, -- that is hard! Yet the children are bonny and beauty-free of all disease, spilling over with happiness and good health, abounding in spirits.

▏Extracted fromLillian R. Dickson's Letters - Oct. 1955▕

Photo Lillian Dickson, the founder of the Mustard Seed Mission, took the children back to the Losheng Sanatorium, so that parents who suffered from Hansen's disease could see their children. The children were too short, they had to be carried on the podium so that the parents could see them clearly.