AL: Welcome to Joni and her friends who take wheelchairs around the world! And we want you to be praying for the Wheels for the World team heading out to Kenya today…
JONI: … and please pray for our other Wheels teams who just returned from Romania and India…
AL: … and, Joni, as much as you love Wheels for the World, I know you really love sharing “unusual” stories, right?
JONI: Oh boy, Al, they are unusual! Like the one of Mariano Morales from Guatemala. Mariano is 73 years old, frail, feeble, and slowly losing use of his legs. Mariano goes out to the fields each morning with his son – in fact, his son sits his father in a wooden chair by the field so Mariano can give advice to the workers. And this is why the son brought his father, Mariano, to our Wheels for the World distribution. You can only do so much… you can only shout so loud to workers from a wooden chair sitting by the edge of a field. Mr. Morales needed to be able to move around.
AL: Were you able to fit him to a wheelchair?
JONI: Yes, we did, but then we realized, “You know what? I bet if this elderly gentleman had a walker with wheels… I just bet he’d be able to shuffle much more easily along the edge of a field instead of pushing himself through the rocky dirt in a wheelchair.” So our physical therapist brought out a metal walker with little wheels… and I tell you what – Mariano’s eyes lit up. He situated himself in the middle of that walker, grabbed the rim, and he would not let that thing go – even when we tried to adjust the height; he didn’t even want to sit down. He let the physical therapist work on his walker while he was standing right there in the middle of it.
When the son saw this, he laughed and said, “Oh boy, now my father will be following me around to give me advice!” But the best part of the story is that both Mr. Morales and his son asked for prayer and they received a Bible in Spanish.
AL: And, no doubt, you introduced these two to a local pastor?
JONI: … the pastor invited them to church that Sunday!
AL: What a story, Joni! And these are the people that our Savior loves… poor field workers in Guatemala…
JONI: … an elderly, disabled, poor field worker…
AL: Who can now move up and down that field “giving everyone advice!”
JONI: … and giving everyone their testimonies as they now know the Lord of Hope who has given them physical mobility and spiritual freedom.
AL: And, friends, don’t forget to be praying for our Wheels for the World teams heading out to Kenya today and India and Romania soon after!
Used by permission of
JONI AND FRIENDS
P.O. Box 3333
Agoura Hills, CA 93176
www.joniandfriends.org
© Joni and Friends