Turkmenistan
Deuteronomy 8:3 NIV
"He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your fathers had known, to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord."
The Turkmen Writing Project (TWP) is a grassroots project I co-founded with my friend, Anna, in Turkmenistan. The official purpose of the project is to provide professional development training to English teachers in Turkmenistan and to work with former FLEX exchange students who have returned home after their year study in the United States. We also try to help needy people as we can.
In May 2006 I discovered God had a larger purpose in mind for our project, which was still in the planning stage.
I received a letter from a man who had attended a workshop I had given in Ashgabat in 2004. He had written a desperate note to me as a last ditch effort to find a special needs wheelchair for his son.
I looked online and saw they were well over $1,000, and that didn't include transportation, but he seemed to have a way to transport the wheelchair to his home if we could locate it and buy it, but that was the problem.
I am an English teacher, and we are not known as experts in wheelchairs nor as wealthy enough to buy wheelchairs. I was overwhelmed by his request. My first inclination was to turn him down and list all the items on my "to-do" list as excuses for turning him down.
However, every time I read his letter and his personal account of his ordeal and how they needed a wheelchair so they could give their son a chance to get outside and into the sun, my heart melted. I prayed to God and asked Him to help me find a way to help this family even though I didn't know anything about wheelchairs.
I wrote a letter back to the family and told them to give me until August 1st. They needed to pray and have faith in God.
School ended and my busy summer began. I took students to national debate competition in Chicago, I went to Ohio for vacation, and I quit teaching in one school system and began preparing to teach at my current school system. Life was hectic. However, throughout the summer, I asked everyone I could about wheelchairs. I tried so hard on my own to find a wheelchair and ignored the voice I kept hearing inside me.
God, of course, was whispering the answer to me all summer, but I felt compelled to do this the hard way.
I didn't listen to God's voice leading me.
However, after a summer of failure, and only days remaining until August 1st arrived, I was forced to listen to the voice of God that had been talking to me all summer.
John's sister and her husband are missionaries. They have connections all around the world, and I knew this. For some reason, I felt like it was wrong to go to them to ask for help. I guess I thought there was a problem with using "family connections". However, I see now, I was wrong in this case.
Because of their busy schedule, they rarely make it to south Georgia; however, they happened to be here for three or four hours the last weekend of July--just a day or two before my deadline of August 1st.
I approached my brother-in-law with my problem and explained how hard I had tried on my own to find this wheelchair.
Without a second thought, he said, "We'll get it for you. That's what we do. Just have the boy's father pick out the exact model of wheelchair he wants, and we'll buy it and ship it for him, too."
My jaw was on the floor. If I had just asked in May instead of the end of July, I wouldn't have agonized the whole summer. I am sure God was nodding His head at me as this thought crossed my mind.
I wrote to the family in Turkmenistan. It took several emails before they realized they would not be paying for the wheelchair--that God had provided one for free that would meet their specifications.
The boy's father was able to get an American Peace Corps Volunteer to escort the wheelchair to his family once it was purchased and delivered to Washington, D.C. The family notified me as soon as they could once they received the wheelchair.
To my amazement, I saw God's hand even in the delivery, and I was reduced to tears at the miracle that had taken place. A Christian organization had found a wheelchair and bought it. It arrived to a Muslim family in Turkmenistan. The date of the arrival? September 11, 2006.
I am not one to believe in coincidences. I believe that date was picked by God. Whenever I am approached by someone in Turkmenistan to do something that seems impossible, I do not turn a deaf ear to them. I have seen the hand of God work miracles in the lives of many people there.
I'm humbled He has used Anna's and my little Turkmen Writing Project to help people. We thought we were doing one thing, but He has shown us that we are really doing much more if we open to His will.
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Dear Lord, thank you for teaching me that miracles are possible if I allow You to work through me.
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