Last week enclosed our time working at Hope Haven, Wheelchair Factory full-time. We had the privilege to work alongside with people who were in wheelchairs (sillas de ruedas…a little bit of the Spanish I’ve been learning). We learned what it entails to build a wheelchair and were able to take part in even fitting and distributing them to people in need of specialized wheelchairs. Throughout our time at the factory, we also taught English and in turn helped me learn my basic Spanish again (slowly but surely).
BUT, one of my favorite parts was during lunch or breaks we played wheelchair basketball with all the workers. There was definitely a learning curve to it and got schooled a lot before I got the hang of it, but now I feel as though I shoot better sitting down compared to standing up. I learned from the best considering a couple of the guys play for the Guatemala Team. This was a good time to just really have fun with the workers without having the language barrier be an issue. Although, there was a language barrier they were more than willing to help us out with Spanish as we helped them out with English which was a huge blessing to have with still two and half months left of Spanish speaking countries.
On top of helping in the factory and teaching English we were able to do devotionals. I had last Thursday and wanted to do something a little different than the typical devotionals, so I decided to teach them the thankful game our team was taught at training camp. It is pretty simple, just whenever you’re in a situation that is not ideal or you want to complain; you find something your thankful for and say it. So say, were on a ‘chicken bus’ and its 3 person a seat and you are stuck standing up between everyone driving on the bumpy ‘roads’ and you just want to complain about how uncomfortable it is you say something your thankful for like being able to take a bus instead of walking. So pretty simple, I had everyone roll on outside since it was one of the first sunny days and had them all get in a circle and passed the basketball around for everyone to play the thankful game.
The first worker I threw the ball to (Gustavo) he says “I’m thankful for my disability and being in a wheelchair”. This just blows me away after being there for a week and thinking how difficult it would be to be in their seat. Gustavo even has a deteriorating disease that is eating away at his body and probably only has a couple more years to live. I have been trying to process this for a while now and am still blown away with how much faith and love Gustavo has; he is just living life to the fullest and wouldn’t have it any other way.
Sometimes I think it is difficult to thank God for certain things when life is not going as planned and easy to give thanks when everything seems to be going my way, but Gustavo’s testimony has changed the way I think about thanks. I should always be joyful no matter what God has in store for me, good or bad and just continue to trust God that his plan is better than mine and live life to the fullest!!!
1 Thessalonians 5:16-18
Always be joyful. Keep on praying. No matter what happens, always be thankful, for this is God’s will for you who belong to Christ Jesus.
