Standing With Hope Offers New Limbs, New Lives
A prosthetic limb team returns to Accra, Ghana this week to continue its work in training and equipping local workers to build limbs for their own people. Standing With Hope is the vision of author and radio host, Peter Rosenberger and his wife Gracie, who had both of her own legs amputated as a result of a horrific car accident as a teenager.
For more than a decade Standing with Hope has worked with the Republic of Ghana to create a sustainable prosthetic limb infrastructure for amputees. “We’re eager to return,” states Standing With Hope president, Peter Rosenberger. “We delayed sending more teams until the Ebola issue in West Africa calmed down a bit, and Ghana Health Services should be commended for their great work in helping prevent any cases of Ebola in their country.”
“We set out on this mission with the understanding that putting a prosthetic leg on an amputee helps one person walk, but teaching and equipping someone to make and maintain limbs help hundreds walk. We do both, while pointing them to Christ—which equips those patients to continue standing with hope.”
The same passion that’s equipped a sustainable infrastructure for amputees in Ghana, also drives Standing With Hope’s new outreach to help sustain family caregivers. Peter Rosenberger draws upon his own thirty year journey as his wife’s caregiver in his new book, Hope for the Caregiver. In his book and on his weekly radio show, he describes the hell that his wife, Gracie went through – 78 operations, 60 physicians, a dozen hospitals and costs topping $9 million. He calls caregiving “One of the toughest jobs on earth.” But through his own experiences, Rosenberger is reaching out to the vast population of family caregivers with the hand of experience.
“The cry of the heart,” says Rosenberger, “is often drowned out by the moan of the body.” Chronic pain and fatigue have a way of blocking our field of view – and often all our loved ones can see is their own need. He explains how feeling out of control can scare us and make us feel vulnerable, confused, fearful, even angry or depressed. “While those feelings can often lead to destructive and poor behavior, the challenges of caregiving don’t cause character defects, they only amplify them—we are still responsible for our own choices and actions.”
“Our mission is mobility, message, and ministry,” Peter states. “We’re reaching out to others with the same hope that continues to sustain us, and we’re doing it one leg—and one weary heart at a time.”
For more information see www.StandingWithHope.com.
(Source: Christian Newswire)
