AL: And on this first day of the new month of March here on Joni and Friends, we’re really looking forward to summer! Oh, not because of the weather, but because of the opportunity for ministry. Outreach this mid-year through our annual Family Retreats. How do they function? Well, Joni Eareckson Tada takes us many miles from both our studios, as well as from your home, to explain.
JONI: This past August, more than 80 children and adults came together at a hotel in the Ukraine, of all places, for the first Joni and Friends International Family Retreat. We hosted a week of family fun and heart-to-heart ministry never before experienced in Eastern Europe. These families, they arrived with a lot of fear and trepidation – no one had ever attended such an event. But the love of God is contagious, and the graciousness of the Family Retreat volunteers began to melt hearts. And during the final days, many of the disabled children, even the adults, they began to ask serious questions about who Jesus is. Especially little seven-year-old Sasha. When she and her mommy had arrived at the Family Retreat early in the week, you could see the despair on their faces, you really could. But by the end of the week, God had done such a powerful work in their lives that mom decided to take Sasha to Sunday school at a local church! Never before would she have done that. In fact, she had rarely, if ever, gone to church. But after Family Retreat, things were different. Sasha and her mother knew something new and different had happened inside their hearts at that Family Retreat. They were new creatures! They were Christians! And they both understood they belonged in church on a Sunday morning.
So, Sasha’s mother confidently wheeled her little girl – now, this is in the Ukraine – into the Sunday school room, only to be met by a teacher who looked down at Sasha in her wheelchair and said, “Why have you brought her here? She cannot understand like the other children. What am I going to do with her?” For a moment there was an awkward silence. But five days of Joni and Friends Family Retreat had worked a miracle in this little one. And with a fresh understanding of her value to her Father in heaven, and her place in the body of Christ, little Sasha looked up from her wheelchair at her mommy and said, “Mama, I know I am not well, but does that mean I am not human?” Powerful words for a seven-year-old! And with that, the teacher stepped by and reluctantly allowed Sasha into her Sunday school class.
This little girl’s story illustrates how much work, oh, my goodness, so much work left to be done in the international church, and it shows how much God can use one of our Family Retreats to birth the sort of powerful, life-changing hope that can be found only in Christ. And it’s happening! Not only in Ukraine but here in the States. You may know a disabled child like Sasha. In fact, there is a family like hers in your neighborhood! A family that’s drowning under the burden of the day-to-day routines of a disability, tell them about Sasha. And tell them to come to one of our Family Retreats here in the States this summer. Check out the details on our website at joniandfriends.org. Hope in Christ is there, and we want to help you offer it to families like Sasha’s, right, Al?
AL: So glad you gave that website address, Joni, because stories like these will be the practical outcome when an individual gives a used wheelchair for the ministry of Wheels for the World. So if you’d like to get more information about that, we invite you to go to the website, which is joniandfriends.org. And you know, it’s been exciting to see how the ministry of Family Retreats has grown exponentially, actually, over these past few years. Certainly gives clear evidence of the need, as well as the appreciation, of those who participate. Family Retreats are held each summer in strategic areas all across the country. If you’d like to get more information, call us toll-free at 1-888-522-5664. Just ask about Family Retreats. By the way, one of the biggest needs is for volunteers – folks like you – who’d consider the opportunity for service as short-term missionaries. How rewarding is the involvement, seeing the privilege of working with a Family Retreat, getting to know these incredible people first-hand. Again, toll-free, 1-888-522-5664.
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