Greetings and Happy Friday!
Highlights of the week May 27, 2005:
- We asked you all to pray for our first radiothon. Well, it worked! We raised three containers ($65,000) and gained about 400 new donors. We plan more radiothons.
- We so need you to write letters to US Representative Cox. We need 200 letters, and we only have about 40. Please reply if you can help us.
- Second annual fundraising event in Boston this past Thursday attracted about 60 guests and raised over $3000. We have two donors interested in funding full containers.
Here is some great news from Lima.
Our partner Camino de Vida opened the very first free Physical Therapy Clinic in Peru. Our long term readers will recognize the name of their very first patient: Kimberly. (She was the 9 year old girl that turned to her mother the moment she got her wheelchair and said “Mom, do you know what this means? This means I can go to school now!”) Here is a photo of Kimberly with her mom and some staff of the Centro de Terapia.
The following is a very brief story came from John Scheman, or partner in Costa Rica. John’s Do It Foundation paid for this container. He claims he wants to provide a wheelchair for every Costa Rican who needs one.
Another wonderful event, the "Do it Foundation" and volunteers assembled 95 wheelchairs in about five hours. The need is great and we will continue until everyone who needs a wheelchair receives one. He’s hard of hearing, his eyesight is failing and he broke his hip in a recent fall. It’s never likely to mend. Despite it all, Manuel Angel, at the tender age of 103, is showing no signs of slowing down. Born in Cebadilla, a village near Santa Cruz, Mr. Siles has spent a lifetime as a farmer, and a father. He has 12 children, 60 grandchildren, and he believes about 40 great grandchildren. He is holding the youngest, Joseph David, who is seven months old. “Yes, I am so, so, old,” he told us this week, as he tried out his new wheelchair. “This is wonderful,” said one of his daughters, Adina “What else could one ask for?”