When God gives you a pat on the back, it can feel like a thunderclap.”We will be forever indebted …”
Today is the very first time I have seen this 2016 annual report from our Thai distribution partners, and I am completely undone: a Statement of Appreciation …
The RICD Wheelchair Project 2016 Annual Report, page 6 – right click to enlarge
… to Wheels of Hope … when there are so many more organizations donating medical equipment to this incredibly worthy project from all over the world …
… when all I have felt over the last two years is that we’ve become a dying vine due to diminished resources.
Federal regulations have redirected all Durable Medical Equipment from U. S. manufacturers to EPA-certified scrap yards since 2012. The following year, 2013, was our “year of Jubilee” as we rested from 16 years of receiving more equipment than we could refurbish and ship. It took us FIVE “Jubilee” years to empty our football-field sized warehouse space of all the equipment! Now it is almost empty. The inflow remains just a trickle of what it was in former days.
Add to this picture a new 5000-wheelchair distribution goal for 2018 from a Thai financial donor to our Thai partner, the RICD Wheelchair Project: an appeal to increase distribution to Thai persons with disabilities— not twice as much, but five-fold! Which means a corresponding five-fold increase from equipment donors like Wheels of Hope— This is nothing less than a call to faith.
Who “owns the cattle on a thousand hills”? The God we serve, the Bible says. To the ancient man this was riches beyond imagination, the equivalent of the physical and financial resources of a thousand Earths.
Wheels of Hope is not done yet! This year-old tribute describes how we have been blessed, and gives me hope. We have shipped 23 sea containers, each with an average of $200,000 in wheelchairs, walking aids and bed and bath aids, since helping found the RICD Wheelchair Project in 2000. Well over 3000 of lives have been changed. Can we trust Him to equip us to send even more?
Though the fig tree may not blossom,
Nor fruit be on the vines;
Though the labor of the olive may fail,
And the fields yield no food;
Though the flock may be cut off from the fold,
And there be no herd in the stalls—
Yet I will rejoice in the Lord,
I will joy in the God of my salvation.
The Lord God is my strength;
He will make my feet like deer’s feet,
And He will make me walk on my high hills.
Hope in Motion 