Sinatra, Cufflinks, and Caregivers

This is Peter Rosenberger and one of the reasons I wrote my new book A Minute for Caregivers is because I remember the sinking, despairing feeling of struggling as a caregiver. No one knew what to say to me. I didn't understand and others didn't understand me.

For decades I foraged along and tried to find my path through this medical nightmare that Gracie and I have endured for nearly 40 years. And I've learned to speak the language of caregivers. I speak fluent caregiver. No pastor, no counselor, no medical provider, no friend should ever throw their hands up and say I don't know what to say to that caregiver.

Because I do. Give them a copy. This book is called A Minute for Caregivers when every day feels like Monday. They're easy to read, one minute chapters that speak directly to the heart of a caregiver and you can get them wherever books are sold. A Minute for Caregivers when every day feels like Monday.

Friends don't let friends caregiver alone. Welcome back to Hope for the Caregiver. This is Peter Rosenberg and this is America's caregiver.

I still think I'm going to go with that title y'all. America's caregiver. Hopeforthecaregiver.com.

Hopeforthecaregiver.com. One of the themes in my new book A Minute for Caregivers when every day feels like Monday. These are just one minute chapters and it is the culmination of a lifetime for me of doing this.

Now I'm in my 38th year and starting my 39th this summer. That's quite a journey of dealing with these things every day. This is not something that's in my past. This is something I deal with today. One of the things that they don't tell you in caregiving school when you go to the University of Caregivers, one of the things they don't tell you is just how much cooking and laundry and cleaning goes on when you're a caregiver. You have to be thinking about the meals and planning stuff and I do all that. By the way, I made a very good meal the other night. My nephew shot a deer and gave me the meat and I've had the local butcher here process it and I've got a freezer full of it and I had a venison roast the other night that was quite good. My mother gave me a wok.

I used to have one a long time ago and somewhere it's gone the ways of wokdom. But I do like to use a wok and I browned this roast with just nothing but spices and just a tiny bit of oil and I had a lot of different spices that I put with it and then I put it in the crock pot with fresh mushrooms and fresh onions and so forth and broth. Cooked all day and it was so good and I've got a little bit left over. I think I'm gonna serve it tonight and I made that for Gracie. I mean she doesn't like throw the plate against the wall and say this is awful. So she seemed to be happy with it and I baked some squash and asparagus, oven baked it with some spices on it and just a little bit of spray on olive oil and a little lemon on the asparagus was pretty good.

Again I had no complaints. I'm trying to eat a little healthier here. I've got to watch my weight. We live backed up to the national forest out here in the Rockies and I went out in the forest and the bears were hiding their food. That's how big I got.

I've got to do something about this. And also I want to be able to make things a little more flavorful for Gracie and me. So she'll be pleased with it and I like to do things that are different. But anyway this is my year to cook venison roast because I have quite a bit of venison in the freezer and so I'm finding good ways. And it doesn't taste gamey at all. I've had venison before that was. This was not. This was wonderful.

I mean it's just truly wonderful. So I was happy to have it last night and I hope I have enough for leftovers tonight. Speaking of throwing your plate there's a great story. I'll set up another story with this story. Frank Sinatra. I'm a big Frank Sinatra fan. I listen to Sinatra in my car when I'm driving. I love the stuff.

I just love his work. And I'm also a big Don Rickles fan. Now some people are not. But I was a huge Don Rickles fan.

Still am. And Don got to be friends with Frank. And it happened kind of by accident. Frank had heard about this insult comedian named Rickles at this place called Harry's I think down in Miami. And Frank happened to be there with his entourage. They come in and Rickles is up on stage doing his act and sees Frank Sinatra come in with his gang there with him. And he said look everybody it's Frank Sinatra. Frank come on in.

Make yourself at home. Hit somebody. And that was how their friendship started. And Rickles would constantly do stuff like that to needle Frank. And one time Frank was known for having a temper. And one time he was in some kind of fancy restaurant that was very artsy. It had white tablecloths, white floors, white walls, white chairs.

Everything was white. And they brought out a steak and for whatever reason the waiter put a bottle of ketchup on the table. And evidently just set Frank off. And he was known for having that kind of a temper at times.

And everybody just was you know had to walk around eggshells running. Well he got mad that there was ketchup on there. Who would put ketchup on a steak or something to that effect. And he smacked the ketchup bottle and it flew against the wall and it broke against the white, blazing white wall. So you had this huge red smear on the wall. And everybody just stopped talking.

I mean you can imagine it was just the awkwardness of this thing. And Frank's down there fuming at one end of the table. At the other end of the table there's Don Rickles. And he looked up and said, hey Frank pass the ketchup.

And it kind of helped everybody settle down. Well while I'm on the subject of Frank Sinatra I heard this story there. It was the first time I'd ever heard this story.

And I thought this would be meaningful to us as caregivers so I wanted to share this with you. Tommy Dreesen. Tommy Dreesen.

I don't know if you know that name or not. He was a stand up comedian. He and Frank got to be very, very close and did a lot of gigs together. He opened up a lot of Frank's shows.

And Tommy's still alive from what I understand. But he recounts the story of coming out of the Waldorf Astoria in New York City one night. And they were going out the back door where the limo waited to take them to a gig.

And Dreesen said that security was kind of rushing to the limousine and this woman jumped out of the door and she is evidently was I think was hiding in the limousine or right at something there. And she was howling. I mean just screaming out Mr. Sinatra, Mr. Sinatra please, please Mr. Sinatra please. And Frank turned around and said what is it? She said Mr. Sinatra my husband is home sick and if I could get an autograph from you it would mean the world to him.

Frank said sure. So he's signing the autograph and she looks at him and she says oh those are beautiful cuff links you have. And they were, Tommy Dreesen said that they were two thousand dollar cuff links and that's back when two thousand dollars used to mean something. And he said I knew where he got them. And Frank said to the woman thank you. And he signed the autograph, took the cuff links off and handed them to her.

And Frank told the woman said give these to him. She said no, no, no, no, no. I can't do this. I don't want that. That's too, I was just admiring them. I don't, you don't have any obligation.

No, no, please don't. And Frank looked at her and said I want you to give those to your husband. And in the limo Tommy was talking to Frank, the guy in the limo said Frank that was not, man why did you give those away?

What did you do that for? And Frank said to his pal Tommy if you possess something that you can't give away then you don't possess it. It possesses you. And Tommy went on to relay a continuing conversation he and Frank had had and Frank said we're all renting. None of this belongs to us and as soon as we die someone else is going to get it. It's going to transfer. Somebody will be wearing our stuff, driving our car, living in our home, living on our land. We're all renting it. And we need to learn that principle. And I thought when I heard that story I thought you know that's something we as caregivers could hang on to. I don't ascribe to Frank being that great theologian but I do love his music.

Tonight the summer when. I love his stuff but I love the principle of what he's talking about and evidently somewhere along the line that principle just embedded itself into him. And I don't know why, I don't know what the occasion was but obviously he felt it pretty deeply enough to give away two thousand dollar cuff links. And I thought about what Jesus said you know consider the lilies of the field. Consider the birds of the air. Look around you. Look at all the beauty around you that God does.

Are you not worth more than this? This is what Jesus communicated and he said don't store up for yourself riches on earth where thieves and rust and moth can destroy them, can take them. Store up riches in heaven where none of those things will ever be harmed by thieves or rust or moth or anything else. Well what is a riches in heaven? What kind of riches are we storing up in heaven? What do you think he means by that?

And I've studied on this a long time. I thought about this and I've come to the conclusion from everything I see in scripture that the things that we do on earth that reflect his heart, the ministry that we give, the lives that we're engaged in, those are the things that he's looking for. Those are the riches being stored up in heaven. Jesus said very clearly people are going to stand before him. He's going to say when I was naked, sick, hungry, thirsty, prison, stranger, what you did for the least of these in this manner you did to me. You did for me.

Or vice versa if you didn't do it. And he's pretty serious about it. I mean there it is. It's in his words. It's in the red letter words if that helps you.

I don't subscribe to the red letter things like some people do but I, never mind, I digress. You know what I mean. But the point is that's in his words. This is what he's looking for. So when you talk to someone who is struggling, when you minister to them, when you care for them, when you do what is necessary for the body as we said in the last block with James, if you minister to them this is what he's looking for. This is storing up riches in heaven. You know if Frank Sinatra can show that type of principle with a pair of cuff links to a woman who's got a sick husband outside of the Waldorf Astoria in New York on his way to a gig, how much more can we do with the riches that God has given us through Christ? As great as that Frank Sinatra story is, and I love the story, and I love the ketchup story too. I love all the stuff with Frank. I love hearing stories about Sinatra.

I just love the stuff. But there's a better story about a man who wrote when he was just in his twenties. He is no fool to give up what he cannot keep in order to gain what he cannot lose. That's the principle that Frank alluded to even though he may not have known Jim Elliott. He may not have known Elizabeth Elliott. He may not have known the story of Jim Elliott being killed in South America by the very tribe that he was trying to evangelize and share the gospel with. He is no fool to give up what he cannot keep in order to gain what he cannot lose.

Or as Frank Sinatra said it, we're all just renting. I thought that would be meaningful to us as caregivers as we look to minister to one another, to store up those riches in heaven. This is Peter Rosenberg and this is Hope for the Caregiver.

We'll be right back. Welcome back to Hope for the Caregiver. This is Peter Rosenberg and this is the program for you as a family caregiver. Hopeforthecaregiver.com. Hopeforthecaregiver.com. Oh, by the way, we are needing a few things and maybe you can help. If you want to help, we would be grateful for that through the prosthetic limb ministry, Standing with Hope.

Standing with Hope was the vision that Gracie had after giving up both of her legs. You've heard me tell the story here many times and for now a long time, since 2005, we've been working in Ghana. We have trained and equipped local workers to build prosthetics for their own people. And the clinic director and I talk weekly and they need some resin and carbon fiber. Those are materials that are used for every prosthesis.

Now we can recycle a limb and we do that often. We have a partnership we have with CoreCivic. They manage prisons all across the country. And one of the prisons they manage has a program.

They have a lot of faith-based programs and ours is one of them. And inmates volunteer to disassemble prosthetic limbs. They're shipped right to the prison and then inmates will go through it and disassemble. So we have all the adapters, the connectors, the feet, the pylons, the screws, all those things. Those things can be recycled.

But what cannot be recycled are the carbon fiber and the resin and things such as that. Those are used to make the socket. The socket is the part of the prosthesis where the patient's amputated limb fits into. And the way you make that is you take a cast, you cast that limb, the residual limb they call, that's the technical term, and you put a cast over it and you pull that cast off and then you fill that cast with plaster. And then you take the cast off and you've got this plaster mold and then you do a little bit of what they call modification to it to sand down the nuances and so forth of it so that it fits snugly on that patient. And then you wrap it in carbon fiber and stockinette and things such as that. You put like a stockinette over it and then you wrap it in carbon fiber and you have a special kind of bag called a PVA bag and you fill it with this acrylic resin and it has two parts. The A part and the B part. The B part is the catalyst and it goes off. I mean you can feel the heat from it and you use a vacuum pump to pull that resin through and it forms a shell around that mold.

Kind of like when you go to Dairy Queen and they dip the ice cream cone in the chocolate, you know, and it forms that hard shell that is so messy to eat in the car. But it's the same concept of forming that hard shell around it and then once that thing is set up properly you take out the plaster and you're left with that carbon fiber socket which is very very durable and it's lightweight but it's also extremely durable. And that is what is fitted to that patient and then you attach the pylons and so forth to that. So it's a complicated procedure but we have certain things that we just have to buy and make sure they can get them.

And so that's what we do and resin and carbon fiber are on the list right now. So if you want to be a part of that, standingwithhope.com slash giving. Standingwithhope.com slash giving. We'd welcome any of your support on this.

You could do directly to that if you want to sponsor this program. You could do all that at standingwithhope.com. And our mission at Standing With Hope is for the wounded and those who care for them.

So thank you in advance for that. Thank you for helping us do this program and for helping us give the gift of walking. It's the gift that keeps on walking. And it is extraordinary to see the faces and the lives that are changed when you put a leg on them. If you give a man a prosthetic leg, you equip him to stand. But if you teach and equip a man to make prosthetic legs, then you're helping hundreds stand. And if you do all of that while you share the gospel, then you're equipping them to stand with hope. And that's the whole point of what we do at Standing With Hope. Standingwithhope.com slash giving.

Thank you so much for that. I wanted to share with you something I've been talking with several caregivers about just this week. Having a regular conversation and I find myself going back to this particular phrase and they're dealing with tough stuff and they know where it's going. Okay? You're at that back end now of this journey.

As golfers would say, you're on the back nine heading toward the 19th hole. A lot of caregivers are traveling that particular path right now. Others are facing some tough things coming up soon. I've talked to so many that are dealing with those kinds of realities. I myself live with those things and I shared with them what I shared with Gracie late summer when she was getting ready for this particular surgery. She knew it was coming and she kind of was overwhelmed one night and she broke down in tears and was just afraid of it.

And I certainly understand it. But I looked at her and I said, Gracie, we're not having surgery tonight. We're not there yet. Tonight we're having dinner and we're going to watch a movie.

That's it. We're not there yet. And then I went on further to say, but I assure you Gracie, that he's already there waiting for us. And she kind of sniffed a little bit and nodded her head and recognized that and she said, it'll breathe a little easier. And I had the same conversation with multiple people just the last week.

You're not there yet, but he's already waiting for you there. So you don't have to fret over this. You don't have to be anxious about this today. Now it's our human nature. We do that.

I get it. But what are we going to do? Are we going to squint our eyes really hard and pray, Lord, just help me just not worry, Lord, just just really just Lord, just are we going to go back and remind him of his word?

I mean, you tell me, what do you do? Do we just freak out? Do we fret?

Do we get all bit out of shape about this? And then we feel guilty about it. So we go back and clasp our hands really hard and just moan out to God.

Oh Lord, oh Lord, oh Lord, oh Lord. Is that what we do? Is that what resting in God's provision? Is that what trusting him looks like? We just freak out more spiritually than other people when they freak out? Is that is that it?

I don't think so. I direct your attention to the book of Philippians, Paul's letter to the church at Philippi, chapter four, verse six through seven. Now, some of you know this by heart, which I encourage memorization.

But for those of you who don't, I'm going to read it to you. Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your request to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Now, do not be anxious about most everything. Is that what it says?

No. It says about anything. He said, but in every situation, not some situations, not a few situations, not the ones that you deem necessary, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, prayer and petition, those two different words, with thanksgiving, wait a minute, we're going with gratitude, but we're afraid.

Present your request to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. That is a very interesting verse.

We've heard it said to us a lot. Many of us, some of us have heard songs where this verse has been set to music, but it's an extraordinary verse. Now, let me read it to you in the message. Sometimes I'll just go and try to read it in as many different ways as possible, see if I can really grasp the nuances of what this verse means. Don't fret or worry. Instead of worrying, pray. Let petitions and praises shape your worries into prayers, letting God know your concerns. Before you know it, a sense of God's wholeness, everything coming together for good, will come and settle you down. It's wonderful what happens when Christ displaces worry at the center of your life.

Kind of gives it a little bit more texture, doesn't it, to understand it in our common language. But the bottom line is, don't worry. Don't fret. How many of you, by raise of hands, just informal survey, I'm not going to report this to any official survey company, but just by an informal survey, just by a raise of hands, how many of you all have ever accomplished anything by worrying, by fretting?

Just what is the general consensus on that? Anybody? Anybody? Bueller? Anybody?

Bueller? No, none of us have. We've had a lot of things in our life that are fret-worthy and worry-worthy. I get that.

Gracie and I certainly get that. But the advantage of doing this for as long as we have, has helped us have perspective to realize it's going to be what it's going to be. And I don't have any control over it. And there are multiple places in scripture, I mean, we can go through hundreds of them, where we're told to not worry, to not be afraid. Settle down. And I like that in the message where it says, we'll come and settle you down. Settle down.

As we say in the south, simmer down. As believers, our responses, our behaviors ought to reflect what we believe. Is that a fair statement?

I mean, would you agree with that? That our demeanor should reflect our convictions? And my question to myself and to you is, am I convinced of that scripture? Is that in my core what I believe? That the peace of God will come and just settle me down?

And I say to you, yeah, it is. I have to be reminded of it. I have to remind myself of this all the time. I have gospel amnesia.

Y'all know that. I have caregiver amnesia. I forget everything I say on this program. I have to go back and listen to my own program.

We're prone to wonder. As I said last week that from the great hymn writer, Come Thou Fount. And so I remind myself, but now I know where the path is. And the path is I don't have to worry about this. I don't have to fret. I don't have to do those things.

I am not in bondage to that. And I can instead go with gratitude to God and make my petitions known. And I can expect with certainty that the peace of God which passes all understanding will guard my heart and my mind in Christ Jesus. But that's what it says. And I'm convinced of this.

I'd like for you to be as well. Because that is hope for the caregiver. This is Peter Rosenberger. We've got to take a break. We'll be right back. Welcome back to Hope for the Caregiver.

This is Peter Rosenberger. Hopeforthecaregiver.com. Glad you're with us. We were talking about in the last block, don't fret, which by the way is not a command to avoid playing a guitar or a stringed instrument. Don't fret. Okay. I'm sorry. That's a dad joke, but it's a, you know, it's a clever music joke. You don't have a lot of jokes about fret, you know, but that's, that's okay. Nevermind.

Moving on. On that note, I wanted to build on that a little bit. Y'all know I'm a big Churchill fan. I love things, all things, Winston Churchill. And I've read on him extensively and I just find him a fascinating character in human history and his quotes are extraordinary. Gracie purchased me a book of his quotes that I treasure and I love them and I like to go back and say, you know, by the way, he was not well liked by the establishment in government in the United Kingdom.

I'm just throwing that out there for whatever you guys want to do with it. But the powers that be thought he was a loose cannon. They thought he was rude. He was bluish. They didn't like him at all. After World War II, they threw him out. I mean, he was not reelected. He came back in the fifties when Queen Elizabeth was there and she, her father had died and she became queen and he was, he was her first prime minister. But make no mistake, the powers that be did not like him. You know, if you want to see a really good movie that highlights him and some of the tension that was going on behind the scenes, I would recommend Darkest Hour.

Came out some about seven years ago. Gary Oldman plays Churchill and Ben Mendelsohn does a really good job as Queen Elizabeth's father, King George VI. But there was a lot of tension within the British government over how to deal with Hitler. And there were some that wanted to appease. They didn't want to go to war. Now, it's easy to say now look back, oh, we got to go to war with Hitler. But Great Britain sacrificed its future on the altar of war, as they said, it was a quote, somebody I don't remember who said that after World War I, they said somebody the best of England died on the battlefield of World War I for basically a really stupid war.

And C.S. Lewis was wounded there. Tolkien also was there in the trenches. And that's one of the things that evidently sparked him writing the Lord of the Rings was to kind of process out what had happened to him there. But Churchill was not well loved by a lot of the establishment types. Does that sound familiar to you? The state, quote unquote, did not like him.

And he yet he prevailed because he spoke with such clarity. And one of the quotes he had, and I will read it to you today because I think it means something to us because when we're faced against difficult things, you know, our first reaction, as we said the last block, we want to start fretting. We want to, you know, get upset about it. We're afraid. We're worried. And Churchill said, let our advanced worrying become advanced thinking and planning. Let our advanced worrying become advanced thinking and planning.

Instead of wasting time worrying because we're doing that in advance over, oh my goodness, it's coming. Let's instead start planning. Let's start thinking. Let's put our minds to work.

What can we do to prepare? So in the little bit of time I have here at the end of this program, I just want to talk about that. How is your mind working? Are you thinking? Are you fretting?

Are you considering? Are you worrying? Churchill admonished us to do advanced thinking and planning, not advanced worrying. Anybody can worry. We all do. We all fret. That's part of the human condition. We worry and we fret.

But something has to shift in order to take that energy into thinking and planning. One of the things I try to incorporate in my life is, okay, let's solve for X. And you thought we'd never use high school algebra in real life. They said there'd be no math on this.

No, let's solve for X. What is the unknown? And then how do we prepare for it?

Start out with the end, reverse engineer it, work backwards. Did you know that the mortality rate in this country is still at 100%? None of us are getting out of this thing alive. If we know that's going to happen and if we know that we're going to age and that our bodies are outliving our minds, then what's something we can do to plan for that? Well, we can try to be as healthy as possible for as long as possible, certainly. Push our minds to think. Don't just sit there and turn on the television and just check out. All of the above are good things. Watch what we eat. Watch what we put in our bodies.

Yes. But what is long lasting? What is eternal? What is that which cannot fail? Well, that's scripture.

Over and over and over we hear that. So would it not behoove us? I like to say behoove. Would it not behoove us to fill our minds with scripture so that when we are faced with the ultimate thing we cannot control, which is death, that we have prepared for this. As Churchill said, let our advanced worrying become advanced thinking and planning. What are we planning for?

What are we doing? And then if we could do that with death, we could do that with everything we plan, we prepare ourselves for by filling our minds and our hearts with things that are eternal. And I will say this to you over and over and over again.

I have played for so many people in nursing homes and elderly people who are dealing with cognitive issues and their minds are slipping or gone. And yet I'll play a hymn that they know so well and they'll sing along while they're staring out the window, listlessly looking somewhere, drooling sometimes. But they'll sing Amazing Grace. They'll sing the old rugged cross. They'll sing these or they'll recite the Lord's Prayer. Those are things that transcend Alzheimer's and the Word of God transcends everything.

So whatever we're facing, whether it's difficulties at work, difficulties with family and relationships or whatever, the more we inundate ourselves with scripture, consume ourselves with it, the better prepared we're going to be able to deal with it. We're not worrying about it. We're planning for it.

We're thinking about it. And it's going to clear our minds, as we said in the last block, that the peace of God transcends all understanding. How many of you all make good plans? How many of you all are good strategic thinkers when you're freaking out? I would suggest that none of us are good strategic thinkers when we're freaking out. And the challenge is, okay, what do we do to stop freaking out? The real opportunity is, how do we settle ourselves down so that we can think, so that we can use the mind that God gave us, no matter what we're facing, whether it's a surgery or whatever, it doesn't matter.

A child that gets arrested for drunk driving, it doesn't matter. Whatever will come our way, and there will be things that will come our way, are we prepared to deal with that from a place of settledness, from a place of calmness, from a place of assurance, that we don't have to fret over this? I have talked to thousands and thousands of fellow caregivers, and fear remains at the top of the things that are overpowering so many of us.

Well, what do we do with it? What does scripture say about fear? And if you answer that question, then you're on your way, because you're automatically responding to it with scripture, and that's how you do it. Jesus was faced with three very brutal temptations, and He was tempted in all ways that we are.

And how did He respond? The scriptures say, it is written, it is written, it is written. Well, don't you think that would be a good model for us? It is written, it is written. And who are we saying that to? Well, we're saying it to ourselves first.

That's the first person we need to say it to. And you heard me say last week, Martin Lloyd-Jones, great Welsh preacher, said we should preach to ourselves every day, reminding ourselves of these things. And as we say them over and over and over, sing them over and over again to me, wonderful words of life, as we do this over and over and over, we are building up our spirits, we are building up our ability to think clearly in the midst of the craziness.

And I got to tell you, as caregivers, we're going to have a lot of craziness. Somebody in the room has got to keep a level head. And if we can prepare ourselves for even death by saturating ourselves with the word of God, we can prepare ourselves for anything.

That's how it's done. We need to think clearly. I love that quote. So that's a quote from the day is from Winston Churchill, Sir Winston Churchill, let our advanced worrying become advanced thinking and planning.

We know there will be challenges right around the corner. And the best way we can prepare ourselves is with a clear mind and a settled heart and a settled spirit. Then we can make the financial decisions, the physical decisions, the relationship decisions, the boundary decisions, all of the above flows out of a place of settledness in our spirit, of a calm place. Do you feel calm today?

If you do not, let me direct you to scriptures that will settle you down and put your confidence in Christ. And from there, we make the decisions necessary for us to function. We're not reacting, we're responding. That's the path towards healthiness and healthy caregivers make better caregivers. This is Peter Rosenberg. This is hope for the caregiver. We'll see you next time. Go to hopeforthecaregiver.com. You've heard me talk about standing with hope over the years. This is the prosthetic limb ministry that Gracie envisioned after losing both of her legs. Part of that outreach is our prosthetic limb recycling program. Did you know that prosthetic limbs can be recycled?

No kidding. There is a correctional facility in Arizona that helps us recycle prosthetic limbs. And this facility is run by a group out of Nashville called CoreCivic. We met them over 11 years ago and they stepped in to help us with this recycling program of taking prostheses and you disassemble them. You take the knee, the foot, the pylon, the tube clamps, the adapters, the screws, the liners, the prosthetic socks, all these things we can reuse and inmates help us do it. Before CoreCivic came along, I was sitting on the floor at our house or out in the garage when we lived in Nashville and I had tools everywhere, limbs everywhere and feet, boxes of them, so forth.

And I was doing all this myself and I'd make the kids help me and it got to be too much for me. And so I was very grateful that CoreCivic stepped up and said, look, we are always looking for faith-based programs that are interesting and that give inmates a sense of satisfaction and we'd love to be a part of this. And that's what they're doing. And you can see more about that at standingwithhope.com slash recycle. So please help us get the word out that we do recycle prosthetic limbs. We do arms as well, but the majority of amputations are lower limb and that's where the focus of Standing With Hope is. That's where Gracie's life is with her lower limb prosthesis. And she's used some of her own limbs in this outreach that she's recycled. I mean, she's been an amputee for over 30 years.

So you go through a lot of legs and parts and other types of materials and you can reuse prosthetic socks and liners if they're in good shape. All of this helps give the gift that keeps on walking. And it goes to this prison in Arizona where it's such an extraordinary ministry.

Think with that. Inmates volunteering for this. They want to do it and they've had amazing times with it and I've had very moving conversation with the inmates that work in this program. And you can see, again, all of that at standingwithhope.com slash recycle. They're putting together a big shipment right now for us to ship over. We do this pretty regularly throughout the year as inventory rises and they need it badly in Ghana. So please go out to standingwithhope.com slash recycle and get the word out and help us do more. If you want to offset some of the shipping, you can always go to the giving page and be a part of what we're doing there.

We're purchasing material in Ghana that they have to use that can't be recycled. We're shipping over stuff that can be. And we're doing all of this to lift others up and to point them to Christ. And that's the whole purpose of everything that we do. And that is why Gracie and I continue to be standing with hope. standingwithhope.com.