When God starts leading you on a purposeful career path that’s meant for you, its impact can reach farther than you could ever imagine—just ask Joni’s friend Alison. Listen in and be blessed.
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When God uses our story, it touches many more lives than we think.
I’m Joni Eareckson Tada and I am still overwhelmed, still so blessed seeing how God has used my story over the years. And even I don’t realize the scope of what God is doing. Take, for instance, Alison Boles, a physical therapist who lives in Kansas City with her husband, Eric, and their children. Back when she was in high school, she tore her ACL and became hugely inspired by her physical therapist. She went on to study PT, graduated in 1998, and has worked at St. Luke’s Hospital at Kansas City ever since. In a way, Alison considers her profession a real mission—she enjoys using her skills to restore people’s lives. But in 1999, she heard a challenge one night that inspired her to take that mission further than she ever imagined.
It happened like this: Alison was on her way home that night when she stumbled upon a Christian radio station and heard my story—she heard about this 17-year-old who dove into the Chesapeake Bay and broke her neck, becoming a quadriplegic. And then after depression and scrubbing the Bible for answers, this young woman started a ministry for people with disabilities, all because of what she learned from the Word of God and from her own disability. The whole ministry became global, reaching disabled people for Christ all around the world. And that is what captured Alison’s attention. She was moved by the whole story, and so, Alison asked herself, could I be doing more? So, she went online and started learning more about the work of Joni and Friends among the world’s disabled. And the more Alison learned [she later told me], the more she wanted to be a part of it.
A year later, Alison was on a plane to Peru with one of our Wheels for the World teams—she was so excited about traveling to some of the poorest parts of Peru to fit needy people with disabilities to wheelchairs and fitting others to specialized walkers. She had heard about the ministry of Wheels for the World, often in remote villages far away from health care facilities; people spend their lives crawling through the dirt or being carried everywhere, or lying in bed, isolated to their homes. And for them, a wheelchair is more than mobility—it’s freedom. And there’s even more freedom when those people hear the gospel and receive a Bible.
Suffice to say, that trip to Peru in the year 2000 changed Alison’s life. She signed up to serve on one Wheels for the World team after the next, racking up the trips so that she could invest her physical therapy skills into rescuing people out of the dirt. Alison has served on so many Wheels for the World trips and has become quite the spokesperson. She said to an interviewer, “To us, it’s just a wheelchair; but to someone in need, it’s the ability to go to school, go to work, and rejoin their community.” You know, if Alison were at this microphone today, she would tell you that physical therapists are a critical part of the Wheels for the World outreach.
So, if you are a PT or have a Christian friend who is a physical therapist, tell them to follow Alison’s lead. Visit our radio page for more info on our upcoming Wheels for the World outreach trips. And pray for our teams as they head out this month with wheelchairs and Bibles to Cuba, and El Salvador, Costa Rica, Thailand, Madagascar, and Chile. Get all the details at joniradio.org. And again, Alison would want you to spread the word at joniradio.org.
© Joni and Friends