AL: Joni, I know you always want our listeners to know when another Wheels for the World team heads out with wheelchairs and Bibles to a far away country, and today our team is heading to Kenya.
JONI: And yesterday another Wheels for the World team returned from Poland where we fit over 400 disabled children and adults to wheelchairs and distributed Bibles and did disability ministry training around the country. So I want my friend listening to please be in prayer that all the Gospel seeds we sowed in Poland and the ones we will be sowing in Kenya will bear a great harvest…
AL: And, Joni, I think it would be good to remind us of the important role which prisoners play in our Wheels for the World outreach.
JONI: Oh, Al, we used to use volunteers who would fix up and shape up and make our wheelchairs all fit and ready for distribution. But then an elder in a church in Colorado heard me speak about our outreach and it just so happened this man sitting in the congregation headed up the works and education programs for the Colorado Department of Corrections. Sitting there in congregation, he listened to me and he got the brainy idea to have inmates make these wheelchairs look like showroom new – and I tell you, I feel funny saying this, but the inmates now in the 17 correctional facilities across the country which now work on our chairs… these prisoners do a much better job than the volunteers did. I don’t know what it is…, maybe they take great pride or great dedication, they almost competing with each other to refurbish each pediatric wheelchair, each recliner wheelchair – all of them – looking in grade double A condition!
AL: What a ministry Joni and Friends has among these inmates.
JONI: And most of them tune into the Joni and Friends radio program on their Christian station because if our supervisors learn that there is a Christian station within reach of a prison where we’ve got a Wheels for the World shop they make certain that they tune in Joni and Friends.
AL: As a matter of fact, I have a letter here from David who is in a correctional facility in Tennessee and he writes, “Thank you for all that you do for me and thousands of prisoners – even shut-ins in nursing homes and people in rehabilitation centers, or people who can’t get out of their homes, etc, etc. Not to mention your extraordinary wheelchair ministry. You have never rejected my requests for free offers from your radio broadcasts and never asked for anything in return other than prayers. Please accept my humble gift of $10 as a crumb from the Lord's table to be distributed to others who have much greater needs.”
JONI: Oh my! May God bless David and the other men in that Tennessee prison!
AL: And may God bless the Wheels for the World teams coming home from Poland and heading out to Kenya today.
JONI: I'm praying with you! And I just bet David in that Tennessee prison is praying too.
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