Wheels for the World Stories
Hi, I’m Joni Eareckson Tada and you’re listening to “Joni and Friends.”
You know, earlier this week I was looking at the lineup of ‘Wheels for the World’ trips for next year. I was so amazed, we’re going be delivering more Bibles and wheelchairs than ever before to brand new countries, to disabled people in Chile and Brazil and Hungary and Morocco and Ukraine, just to mention a few. Nothing could thrill my heart more and let me tell you why. I remember the time when I was in Bangalore, India helping our team distribute wheelchairs. I met a young disabled girl whose own family told her that she would have to go through eight reincarnations before she could become a whole person. On that same trip to India, I talked to a doctor from New Delhi, who said that most people do not consider children with autism to be human. And then from India, I flew to Africa where my husband Ken and I met mothers who had been beaten because they gave birth to a child who was blind or disabled. And as if that didn’t break our heart enough, one man told us that his sister who had cerebral palsy had been left out in the jungle for the animals to take. He said, “My parents thought it would appease the animist spirits.”
Ken and I left Africa and we traveled to Southeast Asia to Thailand. And there, I met people who thought disabilities were “curses from the shamans in the village.” In that same group, I talked to several shy and quiet disabled women who told me with some shame that they had been “easy targets for abuse”— sexual abuse, all this in India, Africa and Southeast Asia. No wonder Isaiah lamented in his 59th chapter: “Truth is nowhere to be found, and whoever shuns evil becomes a prey. The Lord looked and was displeased that there was no justice. He saw that there was no one, he was appalled that there was no one to intervene.”
Friend this is why I’m so grateful for ‘Wheels for the World’ because we are intervening. We are taking the Good News to some of the darkest places on the planet, where there is no justice for people with disabilities. Where disabled women and children are, in fact, relegated to the very lowest rung on the socio-economic ladder and God says in Isaiah, “Is there no one who will intervene?” Well yes, there is. There’s someone who will intervene, and it should tell you why I’m so excited about our lineup of ‘Wheels for the World’ outreach trips next year. Because this is the commission God has given us at ‘Joni and Friends’. Jesus says in the Gospel of John, the 14th chapter, “I am the way, the truth and the life.” So, we take not only wheelchairs, we’re taking the torch of truth into the darkest corners of the world where we’re able to shed light and give hope and offer deliverance through Christ, because it is Jesus who tells the truth about everything; everything from the atonement to autism, from the resurrection to rickets, from sanctification to spina bifida.
The overwhelming needs of people in less-developed nations can either make you shake your head and walk away in dismay, or fill your heart with Christ’s compassion so that you do something. So please, would you pray for and support not only the work of your church’s missionaries who labor among the world’s neediest, but please consider becoming a Gospel patron and support our ‘Wheels for the World’ outreach as we take wheelchairs, Bibles, the gospel, disability ministry training around the world. Learn more about being a Gospel patron, just go to joniandfriends.org/radio today and hey, watch a video on how you can get involved; how you can support the success of the Good News of Jesus where His love is really needed most. God bless you today and thanks for listening to Joni and Friends.
© Joni and Friends
