65,000 Wheel Chairs

A prominent ministry to the disabled community has distributed 65,000 wheelchairs to people who cannot afford one.

 
Joni and Friends International Disability Center, founded by quadriplegic Joni Eareckson Tada, seeks to provide not only the gift of mobility but also spiritual support to affected families. Its program, Joni and Friends Wheels for the World, helps communities around the world understand God’s heart for people with disabilities while providing physical relief through the wheelchair.

“In the developing world, a disability is often a death sentence,” said Tada in a statement. “At the least, if someone can’t walk, they are confined at home, can’t go to school and can’t work. A wheelchair costs more than a year’s wages, so the disabled person and his or her family have no hope for a better life.”
In some communities, disabled infants and children are abandoned or even killed because of the financial drain on the family or because of the cultural belief that a disability is a curse.

To address the problem, Joni and Friends volunteers counsel families that receive a wheelchair with the word of God. They also educate the family on care and maintenance of the wheelchair, instruct them in making future adjustments on the chair as necessary, and advise them on preventive medicine.

Wheelchairs provided to those in need are usually ones that are outgrown, or have missing or broken parts and are discarded by American families. Inmates in several prisons are trained to refurbish the wheelchair and help the disabled.

“While those who are incarcerated are glad to have a way that they can make amends for their misdeeds by helping others, more than that, it is an education for them about the worth of their soul and the lives of others, as many of the inmates’ lives are also transformed as much as the eventual wheelchair recipient’s,” Tada remarked.

The ministry is also working to train church members to coordinate wheelchair deliveries.

“That’s a key priority for us here at Joni and Friends – equipping the Church to minister to those affected by disability – and it is exciting to see that happening through our Wheels for the World program,” said Daniel Markham, managing director of Joni and Friends Field Ministries, which oversees the Wheels for the World program.

The Wheels for the World program began in 1994 with only a few hundred wheelchairs delivered over the course of a handful of trips. Today, the program has grown to deliver tens of thousands of wheelchairs. For 2011, the ministry is planning to for 25 trips to help the disabled.

I saw Joni speak at a Billy Graham Crusade in 1992. She is amazing. To learn more about Joni and Friends; International Disability Center click here;

http://www.joniandfriends.org/

Meditation can do Wonders

A recent article in the New York Times cites medical research into the benefits of persistent meditation. People who spent 30 minutes a day meditating for eight weeks showed improvement in stress reduction. Read the article here;

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/28/how-meditation-may-change-the-brain/

Faith in the Future of Our World

I believe the world is getting better. And I’m pretty sure that I am alone in this belief. What can I say? I am either naive or a visionary. I have a lot of hope for the future, despite the continued problems we see on the news every night. Call me what you will but in the face of continuing suffering throughout the world I think things are getting better.

I have come up with this crazy opinion of the future because of my interpretation of the past. Warfare and depredation is nothing new for the world. Many of my friends point to fighting in Palestine as proof of the end drawing near. But no place inhabited by humans has been free of violence, ever. Fighting in the Holy Land is as old as the rocks. But I have seen a trend in the world that I do consider something new. Large groups of people banding together to help strangers.

Individual acts of kindness have, I suspect, been common since people have existed. But large groups organized into charities as seen in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries are a recent happening on the historical timeline. The last hundred and fifty years have seen people reaching out to complete strangers in unprecedented numbers. The Red Cross is just one example of many organizations that have been created in recent years. Coming out of the 1864 Geneva Conference, the movement has spread to 137 countries in the 1980’s and had a membership of 250 million people. Each country has its own society which gives people the opportunity to help out within their own borders. If you have an expanded world view you can support the International Red Cross. They are the ones who help people in crisis around the world. At no other time in history can I find organizations that give a common person the opportunity to help a complete stranger located halfway around the world. And every year more organizations similar to this one are created. How can anyone not feel good about this development? This is truly a step in the right direction.

War is standard operating procedure for humans; world-wide philanthropy is not. And so I have seen this increasing desire on the part of many people as a sign that humanity is growing ethically and morally. I look at the world and I see things getting better. As I said earlier, not many people will agree with me, but I don’t care. The way I see things, the future of our world is brightening.

God Bless You,

Pastor Bill Whitehead

Pray for Christians in Egypt

With political unrest in Egypt comes more danger for Egyptian Christians. This video is the aftermath of an attack on a Coptic Christian Church in Alexandria, Egypt. Pray for the mourners, protesters and their families.

Coptic Priest Shares Jesus Christ with Muslims

An Egyptian Coptic Priest shares his faith in Jesus with Muslims through satellite TV and the Internet. Hounded by persicution his whole life, he continues to reach out even while in hiding.