Let me introduce you to Jose Miguel. Jose is 54 years old and lives alone. A neighbor told us about him as someone who could use our help. When we visited his little house, we could barely stand it because it smelled so awful. Jose doesn’t have a bathroom and uses a chamber pot in his bedroom, which clearly does not get emptied very often. Jose gets around in a wheelchair, having lost his left leg. Thinking he could hurriedly cross some railroad tracks in time, before an approaching train, he stumbled and fell, losing his leg in the accident. That was 6 years ago. But instead of letting this calamity get him down, Jose determined to make the best of it, and decided to live as normal a life as he could from the confines of his wheelchair. He even trained and entered a marathon for the disabled. He showed us his certificate proudly, saying, “I got 3rd place!”
Since it’s hard for him to make it up the steep hill where our Food Bank is located, we put him on the list to receive groceries on the home visits we make each Friday. His house is falling apart, so we added him to the list of those waiting for house repairs. We also hope to be able to build him a bathroom that is wheelchair accessible.
Jose works as a parking lot attendant and lives off the tips that he receives. Sometimes he doesn’t have enough to buy food, so he was very happy to hear about the groceries we will be bringing him. Positive and enthusiastic about life, he is a real witness to those of us who have all our limbs. He said as we were leaving, “I want to give glory to God because He has given so much to me. Everything that we have belongs to God – He is the owner of this wheelchair, He is the owner of my house, and also He is the owner of my soul. God gives us everything, and He can take everything back if He wants. That’s what happened to me – I had everything one day, and the next day I lost everything. But I’m very grateful to God, because He gives me the strength to live in this condition.”