Wheelchair for Uree

Wheelchair for Uree 

Last year I put out a request on FB asking if someone could buy a wheelchair for a boy named Uree. He lives in a very remote Hamer village called Mino Geltie. This boy uses his arms to drag himself through the dirt to get to where he wants to go. He is also mildly retarded. No one cares for this boy so the evangelist Cheneke and his family take care of him. After posting my request on FB within hours someone offered to buy the chair. (Thanks, Andreason family!) The chair was purchased from Tanzania- a rugged, rural designed chair especially for the bush. However, when it came time to ship it to Ethiopia, we found out that the shipping cost was misquoted and was actually $400USD  . So I again put out a call for help and my friend Jana and her sunday school class (Thanks, Flint Baptist Church) responded with the shipping costs. The chair was then flown to Addis Ababa where it sat in the customs office for one month due to a clerical error. My friends in Addis, Bob and Betty, were to pick the chair up from customs and hold it for me until I could make the 9 hr. journey up to Addis. Unfortunately, Ethiopia does not recognize nicknames and since my friends names are actually Robert and Bethel, they would not release the chair. Betty made numerous trips to them trying to get the chair released, standing in lines for hours each time, making phone calls-to no avail. Finally, I was able to come to Addis and Betty and I went to do battle with Ethiopian bureaucracy! Eight hours later and several ‘interventions from God’  we had the chair!  It really was a miracle that we got it at all. We ‘just happened’ to bump into a customs employee who suggested we try another way. We found the offices closed but one light was still on, so we barged in and found the head of customs still in his office. He listened to our plight (and my tears!) and wrote us a letter to release the chair! After paying for ‘storage’ of the chair for that month, we loaded up the precious chair and were on our way!

So last sunday we drove the 9 hours down to Turmi for the Big Event- Uree gets his chair!

We pulled into the remote village where he lives and Uree came dragging himself out to greet us. I wish I could describe the smile on his face when he saw that chair! He just beamed!! The villagers all gathered around and were curious and also genuinely happy that he had this wonderful new chair. It had taken almost 6 months to get this chair to Uree, but it was worth every minute of frustration and aggravation as we watched him roll himself around the yard, smiling all the while.

What a great day that was- I am putting some video and photos on FB and this blog so you can see for yourself the good things that can happen when people care enough to try and help each other. I hope you feel the joy-because you are partners with us in all this-Tom and I are only the hands and the feet- we are your representatives over here in the bush.

You all made this happen!  God bless you all........