Joni Eareckson Tada: Sharing Hope

Shauna: I'm Shauna with Joni Eareckson Tada Sharing Hope. Thank you for joining us.

Joni Eareckson Tada: Friend listener, you know all about Wheels for the World, our premier program at Joni and Friends. And I've got one of my favorite Wheels for the World team members here in the studio. Welcome, Ken.

Ken: Thank you, Joni. And boy, I do love the Wheels for the World program.

Joni Eareckson Tada: Yes, you've been to Cuba and Peru and all kinds of countries. But you were also in Honduras. Yet it wasn't a Wheels for the World trip. You want to talk about that?

Ken: No, actually it was a fly-fishing trip, but we always look for opportunities. On the last day I was leaving, a young father came up to me and had to have an interpreter, but was telling me about his son who needed a wheelchair.

Joni Eareckson Tada: That's right. He was the father of an eight-year-old boy with special needs. His name was Jared.

Ken: Yes, a bright, happy boy, but he spent all day lying on the sofa. Where he lived, they have very little resources to even think about getting a wheelchair, let alone anybody supplying a wheelchair.

Joni Eareckson Tada: Yes, way up in the mountainous jungle Israel and his family lived, and Israel labored day and night to support his family up there in the jungle. And I think he told you they could barely afford food, let alone a wheelchair that his son desperately needed.

Ken: Well, that was one of the reasons Israel was working at our fly-fishing camp because he needed money to be able to get back to his family.

Joni Eareckson Tada: Right. When he learned that you were connected with a global ministry that delivered wheelchairs.

Ken: Yes, I think it sparked a definite interest and an idea in his head. And so he approached me along with an interpreter to ask whether or not we could supply him with a wheelchair.

Joni Eareckson Tada: Amazing. And I'm so proud of you, Ken, because you came home, you talked to our director of Wheels for the World, and he said that perhaps we could ship a special child-sized wheelchair to El Salvador, and maybe our team there in El Salvador could travel the distance up in the mountainous jungle.

Ken: Yes, I think one of the more beautiful responses we had with a couple of physical therapists in El Salvador was they would volunteer their time, husband and wife, to go into Honduras and fit this young man with a wheelchair.

Joni Eareckson Tada: Right. After driving across the border, this couple, Freddy and Brittany, boarded a 15-passenger plane to reach the remote hills not far from where Jared's family lives. And when they landed, Jared's mother, Laura, was waiting right there with a smile. But with no public transportation, they had to take an old taxi up twisting dirt roads to reach their home.

Mother Laura shared that Jared was diagnosed with microcephaly and cerebral palsy at age two. And somewhere I saw written that she said, "When I received my son's diagnosis, I felt like I was going to die. They told me that he would never walk and likely would not survive." But this wonderful mother cried out to God. That's when Freddy and Brittany pointed to a Bible passage where it says that God has made every child, no matter what the disability, in his image.

Ken: It's so exciting, Joni. All the wheels trips that I've been on, it never fails to amaze me when you watch somebody given the gift of mobility for the first time. And we saw videos of Jared and the smile on his face as he was being pushed around in his wheelchair by his brother.

Joni Eareckson Tada: It reminds me of Psalm 9. God does not forget the cries of the afflicted. And through the heavy jungle far up in the mountains, God heard Jared's cry. And he moved that couple in El Salvador to drive the twisting country lanes to bring the good news of Jesus and a wheelchair.

Ken: Jesus was obviously the one who orchestrated this whole thing.

Joni Eareckson Tada: That's right. And friend listening, come to joniradio.org today because we posted photos of this precious family. And praise God with us that he heard that little boy's cry.