Disabled Lives Changed After Receiving A Wheelchair

0:00 Read more stories on spirit-led living when you subscribe to Charisma Magazine. Go to MyCharismaShop.com and enter in the promo code CPN to receive 10% off the price of the subscription. This is John Matarazzo for Charisma News, and today I have a very special guest with me to talk about the mobility issue of so many people around the world. I have been a missionary to 15 different countries, and I've seen people in all different walks of life that have had various needs. One of those biggest needs is the need to be able to use their legs and to be able to get around.

0:44 Well, my guest today has had a stroke of genius, a God-inspired genius, to be able to help people in a way that most people think there's no way that they could be able to afford or be able to help people with these mobility issues. He's the author of this new book called Miracle Wheels, and we're going to be talking with Dr. Don Schoendorfer, and it is a pleasure to have you here today, sir. Oh, thank you, John. It's a beautiful Friday morning. I'd love to be on your show. Thank you, thank you. You're the founder and CEO of the Free Wheelchair Mission, and I've heard about this for a while, I've seen a few actually out on the mission field in different times, and it's just amazing to see how you were able to take this idea that God gave you and put it into something that's very practical for so many people, and you can really change their lives.

1:46 Would you just mind just telling people how God spoke to you about this and what happened in your life that you wanted to put your experience into the kingdom? Well, I started off in graduate school deciding to become a biomedical engineer and wanting to do things for medical purposes, for hospitals, for doctors, and helping people, but from a very technical and commercial way, working for companies, doing that, was very happy, very successful doing that work. Very early in my career, my wife and I went on a vacation to Morocco, 1979, in a very crowded, very old part of a city, very crowded dirt road, almost like an alley, but it was lined on either side by vendors and people walking through, and we're just in awe with all the colors and the smells and the sounds and everything, but between people's legs crawls this woman using her fingernails for traction, dragging her limp legs behind her.

2:58 They were no asset to her at all, and she was bleeding, she was filthy, her clothes were shredded, and she wasn't looking at anything but her fingers and taking these six-inch long sort of strokes at the ground and hoping nobody would step on her. That was shocking, but then we noticed how people were just stepping over her like she was something bad and not wanting to do anything about her, about her condition, which was bad too. We're new to life in the developing world, and it was later explained that that's just life, you just deal with it.

3:46 All she wanted to do is get across that little alley without being stepped on, and then she disappeared. The whole thing took about 45 seconds, and it just stopped our hearts. What do we do? How do we fix this? Let's go find a wheelchair. It's impossible. All our traditional American ways of trying to fix the problem were not possible, and we just walked away. Went back home and carried on for 20 years on my career, developing my career. That image never left me though. Whenever you experience some things like that, they just really stick with you.

4:27 Those are like heart imprint moments. I've seen some of those people too on the mission field. I know what it's like to see somebody and just feel compassion. I'm like, I don't know what I can do. There's nothing that I can do. I don't have the money to just buy them what they need to get around. I don't even know how to get a wheelchair for somebody. I've helped carry people to places they've needed to go, but that's not a long-term solution. That's just helping people in the short term with that need. With your biomedical engineer background, what inspired you to start making these unique wheelchairs?

5:07 Well, as we advance in our careers and family and home and all that, we had three teenage daughters and they brought us to our knees. My wife was brought up a Catholic. I was brought up in a congregational church. Always gave God credit for creating the universe, but I didn't think he had time even to deal with an individual's life like mine. But then surrendering to him and then realizing that there are great benefits from surrendering and we didn't have to deal with a lot of the issues we couldn't solve anyway.

5:52 I brought us back to church. I started off thinking I could do more than just go on Sunday. I could be a volunteer. I could mentor. I could tutor. I was enjoying it and I think the students were, but I wasn't really being very successful at either one. I did that for a few years. I like to compress the story into a phone call that I got from God. Now, I really didn't have this happen. But it's an easy way to tell the story. So this is how my story goes. The phone rings in the middle of the night. I answer it and the voice is, Don, I assume you know who this is.

6:36 I said, yes. God, I think this is you talking. He said, I want to just talk to you about how you're spending your time. You thought you could help me by tutoring and mentoring high school students from Central America, but you're not any good at it. You know that. I know that. And I don't know why you just don't use the tools that I gave you to help my kingdom. And then he hung up. Well, again, it didn't happen like that. But it did over about a six-month period. I understood all the essence of that phone call had it happened.

7:16 And he was dead right. I was not using my tools. So then this image that was now 20 years old about this woman crossing a dirt road with her fingernails, gee, what does she need? She needed a chair with wheels on it. And the name the wheelchair has the ingredients. And so I went. That's true. A wheel and a chair. OK. So I went to Toys R Us. And I saw bicycles for sale from China for $60. And I knew enough about engineering and manufacturing to figure that those wheels probably cost $3 each to make in China. And they're made by the millions and the millions because bicycles are so popular even now.

8:03 And then next to Toys R Us is Home Depot. And they had white resin lawn chairs on sale. And it was fall. And so I got a whole lot of those for $4. So I had $4. I figured I had $10, two wheels and a chair. So get a couple casters, get some steel, connect them. And OK. And now I had a prototype. And I knew the value of a prototype. If as an engineer, if you don't have something that people can get their hands on, it's really hard to convince them of anything. So I took this prototype to my church, Mariner's Church in Southern California.

8:43 I had a meeting with the mission pastor and mission director. And he was kind of late for the meeting. He was tired. He had just got back from a mission trip to the Democratic Republic of the Congo. And I pushed a wheelchair out and showed it to him. He said, no, Don, I can't believe this, what you're showing me now. Because just two days ago, I saw people crawling on the ground in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. And I see that. And this is so simple. It's so basic. It's almost a primitive version of a wheelchair. But it'll serve the purpose. So let's go to the next step.

9:23 And so he could have completely killed the idea right there. But he didn't. He expanded on it. And so I went and made 100 of them and wanted to do a clinical trial, because that's what I did for a living, getting things through the FDA. And then I had a chance not to bring 100 of them to India, but just four. And I literally saw a family's life, this very first wheelchair. Just incredible story. And here I am trying to get data. And I'm overwhelmed by the compassion of what was happening. I literally saw these families' life change from the moment they put their son in the wheelchair.

10:10 And they could both work now. They did one of them had to stay home. They were living in a situation where it was a break even for them. They were just making enough money to put a roof over their head. Very poor. And so this is all happening in a suburb of India. On a Sunday afternoon, we drive through their village. We give them the wheelchair. The crowd gathers around. And under the circumstances, the man who was our guide didn't ask for permission from the elder to enter the village.

10:51 And the elder came in the middle of this, now 30 or 40 people watching what was going on. And he was embarrassed. And he was mad. And so the elder, I mean, our guide whose name was Moses said, Don, we have to leave right now. I did a really bad thing, a discourteous thing to the elder. And he doesn't look very happy. And I agreed. He didn't look happy either. But I said, OK, Moses, that was my guide's name. I did my job. It's your turn. And he said, what do you mean? And I said, well, I brought the wheelchair. I opened the doors for you. I noticed you've got a Bible in your pocket.

11:34 Tell them why we're here. And he opened the Bible and read to them in this Hindu village. And they all listened to him because they thought they're getting an explanation from the words of Jesus why he was getting this wheelchair. This boy, this young boy was getting this wheelchair. And as we tried to leave as quickly as we can, not to refer to the elder, we got in a bus, started to try to drive down the road. The bus driver was in a hurry to get home. The elders ran. I mean, the villagers ran after us. Oh, no.

12:14 I need to stop the bus pounding on the side of the bus. And finally, they got in front of the bus, put their hands on the windshield. That driver was going to have to run over them. Oh, no. If they didn't stop the bus. And we're all thinking this was in 2001. We're all thinking we're going to be kidnapped now. We're going to be held. Right. Those pretty dicey situations. Yes. They could be. I mean, our imaginations are pretty creative, too. But we turn around and here comes the mom carrying two glasses of water. And she felt she had, at that point when we left, we were leaving without the wheelchair. She understood, even though we told her, she really understood that she gets to keep the wheelchair.

12:57 And she felt she had to give us something because she realized what it had done for her life and the life of her family. And that was the only thing she could afford to give was water. Wow. Wow. So you're able to help people that have just this extreme need. And I mean, whenever somebody's, they're crippled, if they have a family, not only are they taken out of the picture, but somebody else has to then give a good portion of their life to take care of that person. And so you're really having two people that are handicapped in a way. And so by you providing these free wheelchairs, you're literally giving mobility back to the person that actually has the physical handicap, but I guess the family handicap is also being set free as well.

13:52 And as you said, then somebody, they could both start working or they have other opportunities at that point. Those stories are just incredible. And I know that you have so many more of those, and I'd love to incorporate a few more of those in our conversation here. But I just want to make mention, before we started this interview, I just looked up, I just Googled, what does it cost to buy a wheelchair? And it's a couple hundred dollars to several thousand dollars, depending on all the bells and whistles that you might add to it. But you're telling me and all of our listeners here that for $96, not only can you provide a wheelchair, but you can get it to the person in another part of the world?

14:38 Yeah, that's true. We have made in China, because that's the only way we can get these things at this expense, at this local expense. And in India, and they're shipped by ocean container, 550 wheelchairs in a container to one of our 94 countries that we've served. And we deliver them to a distribution partner. And they're the ones that figure out how to give them away in their country. Every country has different rules and customs and laws. And then we've trained them in person and in my virtual training methods.

15:21 They store the wheelchairs. I mean, they unload the container, they store the wheelchairs, they find the people who need the wheelchairs. We have different sizes. They've matched up the size to the wheelchair we offer to the size they need. And we train them how to assemble the chair. And then we train them how to adjust the chair. So when they give away a wheelchair, it's not just dropped off at the door. It's custom fit. And then the family's trained on how to use the chair and how to maintain the chair. And we do all that for $96. That's incredible. That is such a blessing that you're able to do that. Dr. Don, how many people have been able to be, how many lives have been able to be changed because of these free wheelchairs?

16:08 Well these last 21 years, we've given over 1.3 million wheelchairs. Wow. And then so the need is still so great, but what you're doing is immense. That's something that, did you have any idea that whenever you started this, that we would be in the year 2022 talking about over a million people's lives being changed because of this? No. I fought the battle of doing this. I wanted to prove a point. I wanted to write a paper about this inexpensive, durable, functional wheelchair. But then I was going to just write a paper and move on with my other, my day job.

16:55 But I kept on hearing from God, stay with this, do this. And I was fighting it to the point when I got back from this trip to India in 2001, while I was gone, the company I was working for went bankrupt. I didn't have a job. Oh, goodness. I thought that was a coincidence. But when I talked to people who are more spiritually astute than I am, they said, this is how God is working. My wife said, I'm going to go back to work. I've been a stay at home mom for 15 years. I've put the food on the table. Now it's my turn to go back to work, she said.

17:36 And you can do this. You can dedicate your time to this. So I'm hearing it from God. I'm hearing it from my wife. But what am I? I got this education. I got a PhD in mechanical engineering. I've got 25 years of committed career on leading things, complicated things in biology and medicine. And I'm going to start a nonprofit, which I know nothing about. And both my wife, Lori, and the Lord convinced me that that's what was to do. So once I realized that, I said, OK, I'm going to surrender again, Lord.

18:18 I'm going to take orders from you. And so to me, it's not a surprise that I know what his capacity is. The way I like to look at it is one wheelchair at a time, just changing one life. I mean, 75 million people need a wheelchair. But if you can just change one, what a magnificent thing that is. So every one we give away is to them, they consider it a miracle. That's the name of the book, Miracle Weeds. Yeah. And let's talk about your book a little bit, just because I think it's really important. Your book, Miracle Wheels, the story of a mission to bring mobility to the world.

19:03 If you go to MiracleWheels.org, you can get your copy of this. And 100% of the proceeds support the work of the free wheelchair mission. So that's like if it takes $96, I recommend getting five books. That way you're covering the cost of a wheelchair. And you can then also read the book, but give four away to friends and family to help pass on the vision and the heart for this. Dr. Don, what are some stories that you share in this book that people can look forward to reading more in detail? Well, there's one good one. We call it 52.

19:44 We didn't get the name of the person, but we do remember he said he was 52 years old. And we were just finishing a distribution in India and going back and packing everything into trucks and ready to leave, go on to another distribution. And there's this man in one of our early design wheelchairs, we call the Gen 1, with the white resin lawn chair. And he's doing three things over and over again. He's throwing his hands up into the sky, looking up and just praising the heavens. He's wiping his tears from his face because he's crying profusely.

20:28 And he's holding his chest with his heart, his chest because he was afraid his heart was, I think he felt his heart was going to burst. He was just so excited about this wheelchair. And he was doing this over and over and over again, over and over and over again. And so he, sir, what is happening? What's going on? What are you thinking about? And he said, I'm 52 years old. About 10 years ago, I was at a train station. They came and robbed me and they threw me in front of a train and the train came up my legs. But this is the first day in my whole life that anybody has ever done anything kind to me. That makes an impact in your life, hearing a story like that, and that God used you to show the love of Christ to somebody.

21:13 Well, we find people going, you know, getting, getting a job, getting a career, raising a family, doing things that they've maybe they've been dreaming about, but maybe they've never dreamt about it because they never thought they've been living in the shadows in the back room for three decades. We found people like this who haven't seen the light of day for three decades and their families are their wheelchairs or families are keeping them alive. Sometimes it's the neighbors. Sometimes they're abandoned on the street and a neighbor or somebody will pick them up and, you know, and help them live, continue their life. Sometimes they can crawl. It's sad to see.

21:55 Sometimes if they're not too heavy, they can be carried wherever they need to go. And sometimes if they're too heavy and maybe too frail, they live in the back room until they die. And the family doesn't necessarily even know anything about medicine or disability or any of those things. They just, they just know we got to do our best to keep whoever it is alive as long as we can. Wow. So what inspired you to write this book now? I mean, you've been doing this for 21 years. What's the message of this book that's, that's important for today? Well, we try to tell the story as accurately and as sincerely as we can.

22:40 Try to, there's five or six really good stories about what it's like to live in the developing world without a wheelchair. This is not the developed world. This is a distinction. It's not United States or Northern Europe or Australia, developing countries where, you know, people, there's, it's, it's, there's not even sometimes enough food to go around and there's no way anybody is going to even imagine a wheelchair. They don't even have them for sale. They're not available. Any money you'd have would not even be commerce.

23:21 It may just be the food you're growing in your back, you know, to keep alive. There's no way anybody could afford a wheelchair. And then all of, and then the book, try to describe that change. It happens in just a matter of seconds. You walk in, they see your feet. You get the chair. So you think it's pretty well adjusted for their body's shape and size. And then you pick them up and you put them in the chair and then you have to make some final adjustments. But when you try to move away, they're holding you. For one, they, you know, you had to hold them and they hold you so you can put them in a chair, but they're not wanting to let go because they're crying and they don't want, especially if there's a man, they don't want anybody to see how, how, how this gift has affected them.

24:14 And you look around in the family, they're all, everyone's crying, but they're all happy crying and then it, and then you, you pull back from, and this person doesn't even look the same. They had this different, you know, human eye to eye contact, whereas before they're looking up at you when you walk in and suddenly you're on their level. He's on your level. She's on your level. And it's almost like it's a different person. And they're starting to dream. All of a sudden their mind, their minds are racing. What am I going to do? What can I do now? What can I, what would it be like? And then you say, would you like to go see the sunset?

24:56 What? We could, I could go see a sunset or I could go see my, my grandson play soccer. I hear he's really good. How about the fresh air? Would you like to get outside and get some fresh air? Wow. Well, yeah, it's, you know, all these things you give up when you can't move. Wow. You know, these, these stories that you're sharing and the examples that you're sharing are very, they're very touching. And because people that aren't mobile are often not seen, they're often forgotten about. And God is, God is the God of the forgotten. He is the ones, He is the one that's going to go after the, He's going to leave the 99 to go after the one and He's going to pursue them and He's going to bring them, whether they've run away themselves or they've just fallen down and they've broken, they've broken a bone or something like that.

25:47 He's the good shepherd. He's going to go after them and God is using Dr. Don Schoendorfer to provide mobility for people to see the hands and feet of Jesus, the love of Jesus. And you know, on your, on your website, Dr. Don, you have these first generation version of the wheelchair, which is just what you described earlier about with the white resin chair and the bicycle tires. And it's really, it seems like something that could easily be used. And then you've got the generation two, which you rolled out in 2009. It definitely looks like a step up.

26:28 And then you have the generation three that came out in 2013, which has even more customizable parts to it. And it looks like it would help a lot of people. What is the next step for the free wheelchair mission? Well, we're working of course on, we don't kind of call it generation four, but there's a, there's things we've learned. And we've learned by working with people in developing countries who manufactured these chairs for us in China and India. And we've learned how to take these skills they have rather than to come to them with a brand new design that we are, you know, in our, our brilliance would have thought up in our, this, we, we designed a wheelchair about what they can make.

27:17 And we try and then we try to bring them into the design into the creative part of it by asking them, Oh, how would you make this break work better? How would you do this? What kind of bearings do you think we should use? And, and we want to make a chair that's going to be lighter. We want to make it a chair that's even more adjustable. You know, humanity, many people in the world are getting larger as, as time goes on because there's diets that are a little bit richer in calories. And then we want to reach down into this, the other end where a chair for a lighter, a smaller person. You know, in the beginning, I, I realized that families, mothers and fathers wanted to carry their children if they couldn't walk.

28:01 That was, that was, they liked being their child's legs, but they get to a certain point when they're too heavy. And, and, and we went and, but we want to bring that ability to wheel a child into the, into the, into the younger ages because sometimes, you know, these schools are miles away and then, you know, you've got the choice. Do I, do I carry my child to school or do is, is this, is this their graduation now from not ever going to school again? Because I can, I can't spend four hours and walking five miles to carry my kid to school back and forth. So, and so that we're trying to reach in a little bit deeper into the types of wheelchairs that now we know so much about because we've given so many away.

28:50 Yeah. So because you've given so many away, you've seen them in different and different applications in different terrains and different areas of the world. And you've seen people with different needs, different applications of those needs as well. You're able to tweak and adjust and continue on innovating and providing a better service to these people. Dr. Don, it's been a pleasure to talk to you today and I just want to encourage people to check out his website, miraclewheels.org to get your copy of Miracle Wheels, the story of a mission to bring mobility to the world, as well as his website, freewheelchairmission.org.

29:32 And both of those, I believe they'll lead to each other, but you can see videos and testimonies and examples of the work that they're doing. And Dr. Don, thank you so much for coming on and joining me for the Charisma News podcast. It's an encouragement and it's a blessing. Thank you, John. It's a blessing for us to get the word out about this, about we can make the world a better place and help build God's kingdom in the same time. Amen. Amen. This has been John Matarazzo for the Charisma News podcast. God bless you.