Another Vander Plaats?

A few years ago I woke up to a sign in my lawn that read "Vander Plaats for Governor." I thought that was very wierd. But it got wierder. Looking into it, I found that a Bob Vander Plaats, who appeared to be a distant cousin, was indeed running for Governor of Iowa at the time (2002) and also happened to run an organization in Sioux City, Iowa, called Opportunities Unlimited in Sioux City, Iowa, and he had a son, Lucas, with developmental disabilities.

Well, earlier this year, Bob, whom I've never met or talked to, released a book about life with his son. You can buy the book by clicking here. I also am including an excerpt from an excerpt that I found on a pregnancy resource center website (http://www.heartlink.org):

Lucas' days may not be as many or as normal as we would like, but I am confident that they have been purposeful. His life has inspired me to seek my own purpose with passion and to motivate others to do the same. Lucas has taught me the importance of living my “dash” to its fullest. [Bob goes on to describe that "dash' is a reference to the extent of our lives on this earth]

It's nice to see another Vander Plaats that looks at people with disabilities as having an equally vital role in God's kingdom. I urge you to see their role in your life today, and if you can to buy this book.

Over 5,000 People Visit Melissa's World

Over 5,000 people have been blessed by a video we made back in 2002. Then, Melissa was a 9-year-old girl with cerebral palsy whose smile lit up a room. Today, Melissa is older, and she struggles with new challenges as she grows. But, her smile is still more than enough to brighten your day.

We have used Melissa's video to tell donors who they are helping, to let prospective parents know what can happen when their child comes to Elim, and through YouTube, we are showing the whole world how we should look at people with disabilities.

Will you please celebrate this occasion with us? Walk back with us just a few years and share in the joy, the struggle, and the blessing of Melissa's World. Pass along this video to all your friends; invite as many people as you can to experience her world:

Why Not Help People with Disabilities?

Alex Haxton, Director of Operations for World Emergency Relief writes for ChristianToday.com about his experiences with disability centers in Romania. In reflecting on his uplifting experiences there, Haxton juxtaposes the seeming indifference Christians have to the pressing needs of people with disabilities. He asks:

Did Jesus not call for the children to be able to come to Him? Did He not spend more time with the needy, the lame, the sick and those that society would prefer to reject or at least ignore? I believe that we ignore disabled people at our peril, especially if we are Christians.

Can it be right that we will give our money to feed or educate a child in Africa but we will not give to save the life of a disabled child in Romania or to help provide a wheelchair for a child in Guatemala?

Let us at least examine our own hearts and our attitudes. Jesus went over the lake to release a human being from a severe disability. How far will you go? How far will I go?

At Elim, we have been blessed with thousands of people who have been called to care for those with disabilities, both here and abroad. Some of them do the work, and some of them come alongside the work through their financial gifts.

Today, Elim needs to raise $1.4 million by the June 3, 2008, and $400,000 just in the next thirty-two days. You can help. These questions Haxton asks, like "How far will you go?" - that's a very relevant question. What does God ask of you? Where does He call you to serve? In fact, those are big questions, so let's make it simple:

What can you do today? Look to the right of this post. You'll see a little bar that has a picture of one of Elim's children, along with links to watch a video about Elim and, most importantly, an opportunity to donate. We do need you today. Imagine what you can accomplish at Elim through your gift.

You don't have to imagine. When you donate, we'll tell you what your gift accomplishes. So, please donate today!

Wallace & Gromit on Disabilities

An article from the Multiple Sclerosis section of a Medical News website talks about the new website www.creature discomforts.org, a site with ads created by the team that does all those Wallace & Gromit shows and movies. From the article:

The disability charity has teamed up with Aardman Animations to create Creature Discomforts, based on the much-loved Creature Comforts series but featuring the hallmark Plasticine characters voiced by people with disabilities including multiple sclerosis (MS).

The characters include wheelchair-user Peg the Hedgehog, Spud the Slug in his mobility scooter and Tim the Tortoise on crutches and carry the voices and experiences of real people living with MS.

Matthew Trainer, Head of Communications at the MS Society, said: "Creature Discomforts will raise issues faced by people living with disabilities in a way that has not been done before. We hope this will challenge the discrimination and ignorance that people with MS face."

The animations use the genuine voices of a number of disabled people describing in their own words the negative attitudes and barriers they experience, which separate them from society.

Please visit the Creature Discomforts website to see all the ads. And then, visit Elim's YouTube site to watch some of our videos too!

Audrey's Kentucky Wheelchair Gets Rolled Away

Friends of Elim may recall that just over a year ago, Elim student Stephen Sichak had his wheelchair stolen from the end of his driveway, along with his school stuff. The items had been placed there just a few minutes prior to get ready for the school bus to pick him up.

Today, I read about a 8-year-old Kentucky girl who had her wheelchair stolen too, just as we come up on Christmas. You can read the article by clicking here. My hope today is that Audrey gets a wheelchair (sounds like a local family is helping them out), and that the thief who took Audrey's wheelchair has a change of heart.

Stephen never got his wheelchair back, and they never found the person who took it, according to his mom, Erin. But they are all back to normal.

Last year, that story brought supporters out to help Elim, and maybe you can join them this year. You can go to Elim's "donate" page to help out at this important time.

Down Syndrome Causes Abortions

In calling for a presidential disability-focused debate, David Rundle posed this as one of his most pressing questions:

When potential parents discover their unborn child has Down syndrome, they abort it 85 percent of the time. Are you concerned by that?

I don't know whether or not the next American president is concerned about that, but I wish he was. Abortion is no doubt a difficult issue. Most people acknowledge that you are killing a human through abortion (and that is certainly how I feel), but we start to diverge when it comes to whether or not that act (or murder) is right.

Here's what the "85%" fact above tells us though - it tells us that those parents-to-be are asking questions about the value of that life. It seems to me they are asking:

1) Who would want to live a life with Down Syndrome?
2) Why would I/we want to go through life as the parent(s) of a child with Down Syndrome?
3) What prospects are there, really, for this person's life, when he's stuck with this disorder?

Now, I will not be naive and say, "Living with Down Syndrome is a joy and utterly painless." But I will tell you, with the experience of knowing dozens of families who have struggled with the effects of Down Syndrome and other developmental disabilities, that disabilities are not equal to, and do not deserve, the death sentence, and abortion is a death sentence.

A person is not defined by their disability, and when people abort children with a disability, they are doing exactly that, letting the disability define the person.

More than that, a disability requires struggle. Struggle requires perseverance. Perseverance, and the reliance upon God that it requires, are what brings God glory. Therefore, we testify to His strength through our weakness. When 85% of people choose death instead of life for a child with a disability, they ignore the blessings and life education that God will provide.

Searching for Elim

Think it's too complicated to get involved in helping people with disabilities? It's not - really! It's as easy as searching for something on the web - no, really!

In fact, when you use Goodsearch.com to search for everything you usually look for online, you'll generate donations to Elim. Since July, we've raised almost $50, with just a few people using the system. But with 200 people doing just 5 searches per day, we could raise over $3600 in one year!

So, I've got three steps for you to take:

1) Go to GoodSearch.com right now and type in "Elim Christian Services" as your charity, and start searching.
2) Make GoodSearch.com your homepage, so you automatically go there for searches, raising money for Elim's adults and children every day.
3) Tell others - right now. Email this information to all your family & friends and follow up with them to make sure they are helping people with disabilities every time they do online searches.

Here's a screenshot of the GoodSearch website (notice, you can also help Elim by shopping through the GoodSearch website - and there's no better time to shop than right now!)


You can make a big difference with just a few small actions! Please act right now!

Welcoming Disabilities

Helen Keinlen wrote a list for eHow.com called "How to make your house accessible to disabled," grammatically incorrect and non-person-first language notwithstanding. You can read the quick list by clicking here.

Meanwhile, mothers of children with disabilities are invited to relax with other moms once a month in the Kane county area of Chicagoland. Read the article by clicking here. From the article: The group meets from 9 to 11 a.m. the second Saturday of the month at Papa G's restaurant at 250 S. Main St. in Elburn (Illinois) - click here for a map. For information, e-mail Capes at capesfamily@verizon.net.

Today's Blessing: Michael (at Misericordia)

Neal Steinberg, a writer for the Chicago Sun-Times, writes today of a little "slice of heaven" he found at Misericordia.

Misericordia is a ministry much like Elim. They focus much more on residential services, and most of their day program focuses on serving adults - but clearly, they also experience the same message that we do here at Elim: We bless them. They bless us. Together, we honor God. Here is an excerpt from the end of Mr. Steinberg's article (I hope you'll click here to read all of it):

'He's a blessing'
When I ask Chris Patarzzi what benefit comes from his daily visits to Michael, I mean what benefit to his brother.
But that's not how Chris takes the question -- he assumes I mean what benefit to himself.
"It has brought me closer to him in ways that never would have happened," he says. "Little parts of his personality that I pick up on that I'd miss if I visited once a month. I can tell when he's happy, I can tell when he's sad."
His brother isn't a burden, he says. He's a blessing.
"He's helping the family," he says. "Our family was really close, before, but Michael has brought us closer. The last 10 years of my life would not have happened without him."

Thank you Mr. Steinberg for being among those whose eyes are open to the blessings that people with disabilities - created by God - are meant to be in this life.

Elim on Your Radio

October 15 was an exciting day for us here at Elim. President Bill Lodewyk and ACE Program Coordinator Anne Lubbers joined WMBI's Steve Hiller on their afternoon Primetime Chicago radio show.

Hiller introduced his listening audience to Elim, sharing how Elim’s ministry is changing the lives of children with autism. You can listen to the interview by clicking here for a streaming audio file (mp3) or you can listen to a downloadable mp3 file by clicking here.

It's exciting to hear about what's going on at Elim on a big-audience radio station like WMBI. Thank you to Steve Hiller and Producer Michelle Strombeck for a great opportunity to represent the adults and children with disabilities at Elim Christian Services.

Finding Strength in Down Syndrome

In the October 14 edition of the Chicago Tribune, reporter Heidi Stevens recounts the Sullivan family's ordeals this past August, as they uncovered their daughter's diagnosis with Down Syndrome.

The assumption is always that such a diagnosis is not only disappointing, but crippling, even tragic. You can not, of course, minimize the difficulty of living with developmental disabilities, nor the danger of its associated health effects, but you can find a peace similar to what the Sullivans have encountered:

"I wish I could go back and tell myself to feel the way I do now, which is completely fine about the diagnosis, even happy about it! I had such a wrong idea of what Down syndrome would mean for our family. Kate is just a unique little girl, just as any child is unique. And she is adorable and such a blessing to our family. I am so happy that she is exactly the way she is. And I love getting to know her more and more each day."

You need to go read the article (click for direct link), it is truly a blessing!

Today's Blessing: Andy

Today we had our golf outing at Olympia Fields Country Club, and we focused on the new HOPE Project. Andy is one of the adults who worked on a HOPE Project assembling backpack supplies for school kids from Cottonwood Creek Baptist Church. For the golf outing, we had Andy and three other adults from our programs for adults with disabilities out on the course. I used Andy in our video and a flyer promoting the project, and Andy was pretty pleased with that. In fact, Andy told me he was "a celebrity," and "I'm going to be famous."

It's always been a blessing to experience Andy's clear and optomistic outlook. Watch this site and Elim's website for more information as the HOPE Project grows. In the meantime, you can check out the HOPE Project promo video below:

The Great Chicago Rain: An Elim Moment

Three weeks ago, Chicago was deluged with a major thunderstorm, including a few funnel clouds. In the midst of this storm, Rene Bamonti, a very dedicated and loving Elim staff member, was transporting many of our adults to and from their community jobs. Here are her reflections on that afternoon's adventure:

A couple of weeks ago when we had that terrible storm on a Thursday night, I was driving in it the entire time, trying to pick up clients that work evenings and get them home safely.

There were roads flooded, traffic lights out, debris flying through the air, traffic was practically at a standstill at times. By the end of the evening, when I finally arrived safely back at the Alsip campus, it was still storming so badly that I was afraid to get out of my car. The rain was coming down in torrents, lightning was flashing, and the thunder was so loud!

Then I had to drive all the way home in it. Needless to say, it made for a very long and scary evening at work. The next morning when I was picking up Lucy Toering (an adult client at Elim) to take her to work, she told me immediately that she had been praying for me the night before, because she knew that I was out driving in the storm. I told her that her prayers must have been heard and answered, because I and all of my passengers and fellow drivers made it through those few anxious hours without a scratch. Lucy thought to pray for me, and that was a blessing.

Rene was blessed by Lucy's thoughtfulness, just as so many people have been blessed to come alongside Elim, knowing that their support is really changing lives.

Oh sure, I can say this - I'm in charge of raising funds, so I'm supposed to say that, but reader, I believe in what Elim is doing to my very core, because I see the difference it makes. Lucy should be concerned about herself and the difficulties of her life with its disabilities. But she's not - she is praying for a staff member because she has been welcomed in the kingdom of Christ on earth. You, when you support Elim are making this happen.

Thank you. And if you aren't supporting Elim already - what are you waiting for? We need you today!

October is Church Disability Awareness Month

Every year, the federal government declares October to be disability awareness month. I think churches can learn something from this. In fact, I am staking a claim that, henceforth, churches are challenged to host Disability Awareness efforts in their churches, starting with 2007.

At Elim, we're working on this very idea, and would like to share some ideas with you in the near future. Please stay tuned to find out how you can host Disability Awareness Month in your church.

"Not This Separate Category"

Kay Olson over at The Gimp Parade had a great recent post about a CNN report. Aparently she posted on a CNN article about people with developmental disabilities (Thanks for the resource tips in that awesome post Kay!). I loved how Kay broke down the whole "us and them" philosophy:

I think the main thing that nondisabled people don't necessarily know or understand is that developmentally disabled people are not this separate category of human beings. People tend to think, "We can do things. They cannot." And there's no line like that dividing all of us. There are shades of ability, varying talents that surface in surprising places. This is true for physical disabilities as well. Most of us, in the course of our lives, discover we have abilities or affinities for some things and lack talent elsewhere, so this idea that a certain class of people lack value or the ability to contribute inevitably underestimates and wastes a lot of human potential.

Kay hits on a vital message that Elim, too, so badly wants to communicate: It's not about them and us - it's about us together. That's how God created us to be. And though the Fall, sin, and all kinds of debilitating affects visited the human race and caused any number of difficulties, diseases, disorders, and disabilities, God still calls us together, to fellowship together, to be a blessing to each other.
Thanks to Kay for being today's blessing of Truth.

Flaming Hot Cheetos for Cancer

One of our students at Elim has a mom who is struggling with cancer right now. The following is from that student's teacher:

During summer session this year I received the sad news that one of my student’s mothers was diagnosed with cancer. It was found during a routine check-up and she then began aggressive treatment to stop its progress. It was devastating. I have had her son in my class for 3 years now and have become very fond of the entire family.

I made sure to do what I could to be supportive; offering help, sending prayers or trying to relieve whatever stress that I could on this overwhelmed family. But it didn’t seem to be enough.

While I was doing my best to help the family, I realized I might have been overlooking their son. He is a 17-year-old with autism and I began to see his behavior change. During our routine morning circle time, we sing a song that ends with “and how are you today?”. The boys are then given a choice board with nine different emotion pictures to choose from. This normally happy young man, who almost always chooses “happy” or “excited,” began to point to “worried” on a daily basis. He also seemed more anxious than usual.

It was then that I realized that he was able to understand, on his own level, that something had changed in his family. So, with the help of our program social worker, I decided to do something to make this experience something that we could all learn from.

It started with a "social story" that included text and pictures, written at a very basic level, about what it means to be sick. The story included the concepts that people who are sick may have pain, may need to rest or may just act differently than usual. It talked about how the student’s mom was sick and that we could help by thinking good thoughts, offering to help or buy buying a gift to show her that we’re thinking of her. This story was read to the students during their social work group.

The story also included that we would be taking a trip to the Dollar Store where each child would be able to pick out one gift of their choice for their friend’s mom. Later that day we went to the store and let the boys “loose.” I wasn’t sure what to expect. Would they pick something for themselves? Would they even understand that they were looking for something for someone else? I was amazed. The gifts ranged from a jeweled tiara and necklace set, to a pink slinky. One student even picked out a bag of his favorite snack, Flaming Hot Cheetos, and was reminded that they were not for him and he would not be able to eat them. He was then asked again, “what do you think your friend’s mom would like?”. He looked at me like I was daft, and replied, “FLAMING HOT CHEETOS!” very emphatically.

I decided the trip was a success. The gifts were all labeled from each child and arranged in a gift basket with a card signed by the staff and students. It went home on the bus that day and I hoped it would bring some joy during a hard time. The mother called the following day, thoroughly pleased with each gift, and even knew who the Cheetos were from without reading the tag!

We did all learn from this experience. The boys showed that they could feel for others, grasping empathy on their own level. I learned that just when I thought I knew these wonderful set of young men, I really didn’t. They surprise and inspire me everyday. It’s in these moments that I truly see the hands of God upon each of them.

Once again, we see how people with disabilities, in grasping the simplicity but enormity of empathy and basic felt needs, are teaching us and blessing us, just as they touched this special Elim teacher.

I can only smile as I think about how this mom will open her basket and wonder "Why flaming hot cheetos?"

Johnny Who?

I never, ever, ever in my life thought I would ever quote the star of an MTV show with a very unfortunate name, but here goes.

In last year's movie, The Ringer, Knoxville notes in the bonus features that

“God has taken something from them in one area, but He’s made them extraordinary in all the other areas.”

It's a great quote, and it really reflects the truth of what disabilities mean. Some people say that a disabiled sense in one area actually heightens your other senses. I don't think it does - I think it makes you rely more on your other senses, something you don't do when you have all of them functioning properly.

"Rely" is the key word in this discussion. When some is disabled, they cannot rely on that part of them that is disabled. I have a speech impediment. I cannot trust that my communication will come through clearly just by me mumbling. I must find ways of making sure I am clear, and I do that by relying on different tricks that help me get around my impediment.

People with more severe disabilities rely on more severe solutions: a full-time aide, speech devices, wheelchairs, friends. They all "rely." And it is this reliance that offers to teach us so much, and which leads into my next two posts. The first will be about where we place value when it comes to disabilities, and the second will be on the object of our reliance.

Today's Blessing: Mohinder

When two Elim staff members arrived in Asia* this past April, they learned a lot about the differences in cultures. But some things are the same across the ocean, like Mohinder.

Mohinder is a little boy who had never made eye contact with his mother. In fact, it was difficult to ever tell if he was looking at anything in particular.

Kim wanted him to make eye contact, to engage with his environment. So she tried all kinds of things to get his attention and to get him to lock his sight on something, anything.

After many unsuccessful tries, Kim finally found a ball that lit up when you pounded it on the table. She splatted it right in front of Mohinder and his eyes darted toward the ball. A few more times, and he was looking at it consistently.

Mohinder's mom was excited, and she was standing right there. She took the ball and started banging it, geting Mohinder's attention, then pulling the ball towards her own face, forcing him to finally look his mother in the eyes. She did this over and over and over. She was so happy to see Mohinder do this, she started crying.

But it gets better.

Kim and Mohinder's mom would then guide his hand to the ball, and then, holding his hand and the ball, they would pound the ball down, settying off the lights. Mohinder could see that he could interact with this ball. He could do this. Slowly, he took more and more interest, and independence.

And by the end of the week, Mohinder was actually taking the ball on his own, pounding it, and watching with excitement as he caused the lights to go on. What a blessing!


* country un-named and child's name changed

Today's blessing: Michelle

Today, I watched as Michelle practiced sorting through different colored blocks, trying to arrange them in the right color-coded bowls. In the process, Michelle is learning sorting skills crucial to her vocational development. As I took her picture, she couldn’t help but smile every few seconds, even squeezing in a muffled "cheese" from time to time. She must have been thinking “I am supposed to smile when my picture is taken, but how many pictures does he have to take?”

Michelle was a blessing to me this morning, but I had to be open to the blessing too. This is the lesson then: God blesses you in unexpected ways, through people you don't expect. Be open to receiving His blessing from whatever source He chooses.

Madness of God

In his books, Rev. John Timmer (an ordained minister of the Christian Reformed Church denomination) frequently refers to works by Elie Wiesel. One quote that stands out for me is from a play by Wiesel called "The Madness of God." Here's what Timmer says concerning Wiesel's decision to call it God's madness rather than the madness of a group or individual person:

"...God's madness is his decision to use a weak and despised people to be the instrument of his saving purpose in history, to be the means whereby he brings healing and salvation to the nations."

Here again we see how God's strength is displayed, and powerfully so, in the midst of man's weakness. It seems as madness to us - why use what's weak when you want to succeed? Why use the lowly to proclaim your power? This is indeed the madness of God, and it is seen and evident all around us.

Beginning with an understanding

Something I cannot do in this blog is pull my thoughts away from the context. I believe things. Because I believe these things (my context) I live my life a certain way and pursue certain goals.

I also don't believe some things. I'll start with that. I don't believe that what we see is all there is. I don't believe that a religious life means you go to heaven when you die and that's it. I don't believe that everyone subscribes to a common understanding of what's right and wrong purely because of 'societal norms.'

So what do I believe then, what is the context for this blog?

I have observed that all people (every single one) has a sense of what is right and what is wrong. It is not learned. From infancy, we know it is right for you to feed me but not to hurt me, and our sense of this 'morality' can grow and sophisticate as we get older (I say 'can' because not everyone lets that happen). But even though everyone innately understands at least a sense of right and wrong, we notice that:
1) the world often seems out of balance with what's right and what's wrong; and
2) each of us often fails to live up to what we actually know is right

It is therefore as though we live in a world that has been placed askew - out of whack. It's as though the 23-degree angle at which the poles spin our little globe has also impacted how we live our daily lives, and everything is off balance, so many things are wrong. Disease, war, lying, pollution, health care disasters, natural disasters - all speak to a reality that things are not as they should be.

And yet, some good still comes out of it. We find ourselves better off for the struggles we went through. We gather together, we help each other, we donate money to causes, we offer aid. People get better from illnesses, live to 90 despite smoking like a chimney, and forgive their daughter's abuser. This doesn't speak to things wrong; it speaks to something, somewhere, being right. And it's right because it's in line with what we think of as 'right.' It coincides with our innate understanding of right and wrong.

It is as though there is this world and another world, living concurrently, at odds with each other. And it is this I believe. Of course, this leads tme to conslusions you can probably jump to as well. And we will get to those. But I felt it was important to establish some kind of baseline so that you knew where I was coming from.

Hopefully, you can accept these ideas as valid perspectives, and continue to visit this resource, and we can continue the conversation.

Rethinking Disability

Do you realize how much of your world is filled with people who are a lot like you? I know that's true for me.

A few years ago I started working at Elim Christian Services, where there's a lot of people who are very different from me. Okay, I do have a speech impdeiment, but everybody at Elim has some kind of significant developmental disability.

Most people look at a place like Elim and assume it's a place of sadness, but it's not. It's become a source of joy and blessing in my life. But it's not because of Elim, it's because of the people there.

They have revealed to me a powerful statement: God's strength is made evident in weakness.

We cannot hide from weakness or struggle or pain. It eventually finds us one way or the other. This blog, I hope, will become a place where you can see and celebrate stories of success over disability, success despite pain, and even success because of pain - I believe all three are evident every day. In fact, I believe that we can and even should challenge our definitions of success.

How's that ? Vague enough for you? Well, every journey begins with one step. Maybe every blog begins with a really bad first entry. We'll see if they get better. Thanks for stopping by.