It has been a number of years, but I can still remember watching him day after day. He was the last to leave the dormitory, and the last to reach the classroom. The location was the preacher training school in Mponela, Malawi. The distance between the two buildings was only about 25 feet, so it was only a hop, skip and a jump for his colleagues. But for Elias, the leper, the distance was one that brought great difficulty. In the nations of the sub-Sahara where much of the focus is on surviving, the physically handicapped crawl.
For a man like Elias, crippled by the hideous effects of leprosy, he finds his hands and legs almost useless in helping to get around. This problem however, does not stop this middle-aged man from being a preacher, and a student. A long time ago he owned a wheelchair, but when it needed repairs some of his friends took it to a repair shop, and it never returned.

Now a new day had dawned for the preacher from Dowa Hills. Today I saw him, four years after he lost that wheelchair. He was smiling, and with distorted hands he reached out to shake my hand, and thank everyone for this gift that had come to him from the Free Wheelchair Mission and the Malawi Project. It was a good and warm handshake from an old friend.