Dear Friends and Family,
Happy New Year to all! December 11-12 I had the opportunity to attend a conference at the Retreat Center that belongs to our church with my friend Julia who has a spinal cord injury. I went as her volunteer as she requires assistance with almost everything. Many other young people also attended the conference. I had a very good time resting and working away from the busy city. Julia is my good friend and she enjoyed her time there too. Julia’s mom is her caregiver and she was also happy to have a couple of days off to work around the house.
This is my little patient Anya. She is a very sweet girl who has Cerebral Palsy. One day she showed up for therapy wearing a costume of a fox. She said she was getting ready for St. Nicolas’ Day and was going attend a performance at her brother’s school. She was so cute in the costume and we had lots of great fun together. She is a very hard worker. She tries her best in therapy and has progressed since last year. She can walk in this beautiful walker that was donated to our clinic and now she is learning to turn it. She is such a lovely girl!
Vanya is our new worker who joined our center earlier this year. He plans to study to become a physical therapist and work with us. He is an answer to our prayers for male therapists. We are so grateful to have him. Now he helps us to work with our patients and also works with some patients by himself. It is great to have an extra pair of hands around our center! The patient we are working with in this picture is Pavlo, who I wrote about in my previous letter. He is progressing even more in therapy after his stroke. We were able to walk with a quad cane for 10 meters last Friday! He said to me: “When I started here, my dream was to take a couple of steps. And now I am doing it.” I thank God for his progress.
On December 26, we had another club for people with disabilities, called Time Management. We talked about the way we all spend our time. One interesting fact we all learned was that an average person spends 40 minutes talking on the phone daily, which totals 10 days a year and 3 years during lifetime. On the other hand, an average person spends 10 minutes with God daily, which totals only 3 days a year, 7 months during lifetime. We talked about the way to better spend our time in 2016, dedicating more of it to people and God. We also had a fun time of making snowmen when we divided into teams. Everyone had a lot of fun! Our church provided Christmas presents for people with disabilities and everyone had some memorable things to take home.
Thank you all for praying for the work God is doing here! I enjoy getting to do my part here very much!