America's Caregiver

Welcome to Hope for the Caregiver here on American Family Radio.

This is Peter Rosenberger. This is the program for you as a family caregiver. Glad to have you with us. Hopeforthecaregiver.com. Hopeforthecaregiver.com. Big shout out to all of our affiliates that care in the program as well, particularly the Truth Network, welcoming stations in the upstate of South Carolina where I'm from, Greenville-Spartanburg area, and just thrilled to have you along with us as we journey into the world of caregivers as we help strengthen those who care for someone with a chronic impairment. Helping you as a caregiver stay strong and healthy while you take care of someone who is not.

Hopeforthecaregiver.com. He calls himself America's mentor as we listen to all the things going on in the news, and he's like, oh, if they just listen to me, then it's really funny. And I said, well, I'm America's caregiver.

And it's kind of been a running gag with us. And then more and more people said, nope, you need to do that. You need to do that. And my agent, even my book agent said, no, you need to go with that.

And then I've got a whole team of people working with me on some other stuff. And they said, no, you need to go with that. You've earned the right.

And I thought, well, it's a little ostentatious. They said, no, no, you could do this because this is what we need. These principles that you talk about for caregivers will help this nation if we incorporated these principles.

And so I thought, well, all right, let's give this a whirl. Let's talk about the things that we deal with as caregivers and see would it make sense for the United States of America to adopt these principles. All right. And I'm going to give you three right off the bat and we'll unpack them a little bit. And then you tell me if this is making sense to you.

Tell me if this earns the title of America's caregiver. Number one, boundaries. How many times do we talk about boundaries on this program in my books and everything else that I talk about the importance of us having boundaries, you know, even God recognized the need for boundaries.

He put a Sentinel there at the Garden of Eden, you know, with the flaming sword, you can't go in here. Boundaries. And boundaries are important for us in all of our relationships, how we deal with not only our loved ones, but with other people, with anybody, anybody that we are any kind of relationship with, you still have to have healthy boundaries, not punitive boundaries like in, you know, like I mentioned with the Garden of Eden, that was because of sin, but healthy boundaries. And sin certainly is the reason we have to have so many boundaries because we have a sin nature. If you look at the way so much of the Old Testament of the way people worshiped and approached God, they had to have very strict boundaries about going into the tabernacle and so forth, the mountain of God and how they dealt with the ark and so forth. Well, the boundaries are big part of life.

And I can't think of any healthy relationship in our life that is not managed well by boundaries. Well, what about this country? I mean, can you think of any country that has open borders?

Can you think of any country that allows what we've allowed in in this country? I can't, you know, and you can decide what side of the political spectrum you fall on, but all I can say is, do you lock your doors at night? I mean, if not, you must live in a very, very safe place. We live in a very safe place, but I still lock the doors.

Just life. Do you lock your car when you go into the store or do you just leave it open? I mean, you know, we have boundaries. We have boundaries for our homes, for our vehicles, for our relationships.

Why do we not have them for our country? I can promise you this, when you go through the airport, they have a lot of boundaries. You know, I told you all the time I was at the Denver airport and I did the unthinkable. Oh my goodness, I did the unthinkable.

I unhooked one of those nylon barriers, those little rope barriers made out of nylon and wheeled Gracie across an empty place, because I had two carry-ons and Gracie in a wheelchair and it was just very cumbersome. So I was just in the wrong lane and there was nobody there. And I get to the guy with the TSA there and he made me go back down the empty aisle and turn around and come back where I wasn't getting on the plane. Well, you can imagine the love, tenderness, and the patience and long suffering that erupted from me at that point of this little Barney Fife-esque Dean Wurmer type of guy. And you know, he was enforcing a boundary.

Yes, I did. I unhooked the nylon barrier and I thought, wow, if I had no idea that nylon barrier had so much power, I think we should send those to the southern border because that's all we need. And that TSA agent, because he was very zealous about his job, but that was a boundary. And I could not get on the plane and go any further past that point, you know, unless I did what this guy told me to do.

And I was not in a position I could argue with it. Now, Gracie, as you can imagine, was looking at me, just, you know, calm down, don't say anything, be quiet. Why don't you let me handle the TSA from now on? The airports in this country are what I like to call a sanctification opportunity for me, a sanctification opportunity.

Do you have sanctification opportunity? As if caregiving caregiving wasn't enough. And then we got to go to the TSA, but they have boundaries. Boundaries are very important in our life.

Why are they not important for our country? So my first foray into the world of accepting the title of America's caregiver that has been thrust upon me by people. I embrace it because I love this country. I absolutely love the United States of America. I love this country. I love everything about it, even its flaws. The hymn writer said when she wrote America the Beautiful God, men die in every flaw. We have so many flaws.

Bob Woodson, who's, if you don't know who he is, go out and find out. He's a wonderful writer, thinker, speaker. And he was talking about, you know, we had a birth defect in this country, which was slavery. It was a birth defect. But as caregivers, we know that you don't destroy the child with a birth defect.

You don't do that. What you do is you rehabilitate the child. You provide adaptive measures so that the child can grow and learn despite whatever disabilities or birth defects or anything that was a hindrance to a normal growth. But you don't destroy the child. We're pro-life here. We love life. And I love this country.

We have a lot of flaws, but we have such exquisite beauty in the founding of this country and the principles that we embody. And boundaries are a big part of it. In fact, it says in the Constitution, provide for the common defense. And I think, well, that's protecting your boundaries. You protect, you have boundaries. Well, why do we not have boundaries in this country? Why is that? Why is, why is this even an argument? Why are we having this conversation?

Why is this even an issue? I mean, I can't think of anywhere you go in life to do any kind of business, government work or anything else where there's not some type of barrier or boundary. You know, I've been to the Capitol, I've been to the White House.

I've been into all kinds into all kinds of places. And there's always some kind of barrier or boundary. It's just a part of life. And the fact that we don't think so when it comes to the security of this nation, particularly on our southern border, indicates a flawed sense of reasoning. And we as caregivers understand that, don't we? We truly do understand that flawed sense of reason because we let our boundaries lapse and we have to maintain them.

We have to respect them. And that's part of the journey for us as caregivers to be healthy caregivers. So that's my first point on this quest to earn your vote as America's caregiver.

But anyway, we'll talk some more when we come back. This is Peter Rosenberger. This is Hope for the Caregiver.

We'll be right back. Peter Rosenberger. He's not a preacher. He's America's caregiver. Welcome back to Hope for the Caregiver. This is Peter Rosenberger. This is America's caregiver. And we're so glad that you are with us.

You know, I was talking about the last segment about boundaries. That's what makes our country secure. That's what makes any relationship secure. And you know, I am making a case for it. The principles that we learn as caregivers, why can't they be used for more than just the caregiving world? I've had people tell me this since I started doing this program. They said, you know, the stuff you talk about is not just for caregivers.

I said, well, I know that. They're sound principles. I just focus on the caregiving world because that is where the acute need is felt that I feel like I could speak to. But I'm looking at what's happening to the country and as we're unraveling, it seems like, and who we are as a nation, we've lost our way a little bit. And these principles are great ways to help us regain that footing. This is what happens to caregivers. We lose our way. We become disoriented. I remember back a year ago when I had Colonel Oliver North on my program and he published my book and he said on the battlefield, situational awareness keeps us alive. We got to know what's going on around us. And he said, but as a caregiver, I had none until I read your book, Peter.

And so I was like, wow, I never really quite thought of that in those terms before, but it made a lot of sense, situational awareness. And would you say, I mean, you tell me, what do you think of our country right now? What do you think is going on with us? Do you think that this country has serious issues? I mean, we're 34 plus trillion dollars in debt. We're borrowing a trillion dollars every hundred days. Does that concern you? We have a porous Southern border.

We have no idea who's coming into this country and what they're bringing with them. We have riots and all kinds of things going on in our campuses where there is just blatant. I want to stop saying antisemitism because Semitic actually refers to the Middle East. What it is, is it's anti-Jewish and anti-American. It's very specific. Antisemitism is really almost a bit of a misnomer.

If you really want to drill down to what's going on, these people hate Jews and they hate America. Is that a problem? If it is, what do we do about it? What's a caregiver principle that we've talked about on this program that might start addressing some of these things? Well, we've talked about boundaries. That's something we talk about on this program all the time.

How about identity? I talk about the three I's that every caregiver faces, our loss of independence, our isolation, and our identity. Well, who are we as a people? Do you think we've lost that as a way to who are we as a caregiver? How many caregivers do you know that don't even know who they are anymore? They lose themselves in someone else's story. And one of the things I've worked hard to do for the 13 years now that I've been on the air and through all my books and everything else is to be able to help my fellow caregivers find that path towards their own identity, speaking in first person singular.

Now, why is that important? Because if we are lost in something else, if we're trying to identify as something else other than what we are, do you think that's a problem? Now, where am I going with this?

Well, of course, you know where I'm going with it. How many people are identifying as this, identifying as this, identifying as this in America versus how many people just identify as an American? This is our country. This is the United States of America. We have a constitution, which is a legal contract. Scalia said that so beautifully. It's not a hope this will work out.

This is a legal contract that was started. And it is up to us, every successive generation, to preserve the integrity of that contract. And we're not doing it because we've lost our way.

We don't have boundaries. We don't know who we are anymore. And I can tell you, as a caregiver, I understand that journey. There was a time in my life where I just lost my way. I didn't know who I was. Being a caregiver has consumed so much of my life, much of my life, but it went too far and consumed my identity.

And I allowed it to do so. And I've had to step back a bit and say, okay, who am I? Who is Peter Rosenberg? And I ask you the same question.

Who are you? Well, don't you think those principles mean something to us as a country? Who are we as a country? Are we this multicultural country? No, that is not healthy for us to be that. We cannot be that. We are Americans.

Now we may have diverse cultures that come here, but we are not a multicultural, or at least we should not be, any more than I should be a multicultural person. When I introduced myself, and somebody asked, who are you? I'm Gracie's caregiver.

How would you feel if I did that? I used to, sometimes. And it's one thing to be joking about it. It's another thing that's what I'm wrapped up in. I'm not a caregiving husband. I am Peter Rosenberger.

I'm a husband and I caregive, in that order. Do you see how easy it can be to get lost in that, where we lose our identity? Now, if it could happen to an individual, it could happen to a lot of individuals. If it happens to enough of them, it could happen to a nation. And do you think that's where we are? Have we lost our identity as a country?

Who are we? I saw the other day some media presence or media person, maybe even somebody in Congress. I can't remember. Somebody well known in the media or something.

I don't know. One of the talking pundits hit and said something effective. They were castigating conservative Americans saying they think their rights come from God.

And I'm thinking, well, yeah, thank you for stating the obvious. Who else do you think they came from? Do you think they came from the state? And actually, yes, they actually think that, that the government assigns rights. But see, this country was founded on the individual and we wanted to place limits on a government. If you remember back when he was president, Obama said that the constitution contains negative liberties.

Remember he used that word? Negative liberties. What do you think he meant by that? Well, it's telling the government what it can't do. Well, that's exactly what we were built to do as a nation was to tell the government what it can't do. That the individual needs to be healthy and free to pursue or fail at their own pace.

And the government is there to keep the playing field level. That we've lost that somewhere along the way. We have to regain our identity. Well, how do you regain your identity?

And I go back to where it started for me. I was so busy trying to get everything taken care of with Gracie that I completely neglected Peter. Sometimes we're so busy trying to carry our loved one to Jesus that we lose sight of where the road is ourselves.

Okay, if I get Gracie settled, then okay, then I'll be okay. And that is not what scripture teaches. You go through scripture after scripture after scripture, learning to be still, content, at peace, and even joyful in the midst of whatever is going on around. That I don't have to have something else that I identify with in order for me to be settled in who I am in Christ. That takes a little bit of practice and work and understanding to do that, but it pretty much says it right here in this hymn. Listen to this. Jesus loves me.

This I know. Now, why do I know that? Because the Bible tells me so.

And here's this identity course that we should all sing. Yes, Jesus loves me. Oh, yes. Do you hear that? Jesus loves me.

Yes. Yes, Jesus loves me. For the Bible tells me, one more time, the Bible tells me, the very word of God says this. The Bible tells me so. That's where our identity comes from, is who God says we are. Who God says we are.

And who does he say this? And how are we going to know this if we don't go read his word? And you could look through all of scripture and you could just see so many parts where God specifically was talking to different people. I saw you here. I knew you.

I did this. And he sees us. God is very personal God. He's not an abstract God. He's very personal.

He knows your name. And this country was founded on that concept that we have a God who knows us and we are known by him. And the principles that we set forth as a nation should reflect that. And the principles we live by as a caregiver of our identity, not identifying as something because of some kind of mental health dysfunction. I'm talking about who are you as a person? Once you understand that, then we can function in a healthy manner. As long as you're delusional.

And if you're a guy that thinks you're a girl or vice versa, you're not going to have, you're not in reality at this point. And as long as you want to hybrid, I don't go up and tell people that I am a German Christian or a South Carolina Christian or a Montana Christian. I'm a Christian. I don't say I'm a Montana American. I'm an American. You understand, as long as we keep hybriding our identity, we will never be able to function in a healthy manner. That goes to individuals.

And that goes to a nation. Prove me wrong. These principles are bedrock. I didn't establish these principles.

I just simply see them and have applied them and have seen the results. These principles are established in scripture because God deals with us personally. You see that all through scripture where God deals with individuals, but you also see where God will deal with a nation. You all know how passionate I am about helping caregivers maintain, establish and maintain their identity. Well, guess what?

It's also important for a nation to maintain its identity. Who says that? Well, I say it. I'm Peter Rosenberger and I'm America's caregiver.

I'll be right back. Welcome back to Hope for the Caregiver. This is Peter Rosenberger. This is the program for you as a family caregiver. Hopeforthecaregiver.com.

Hopeforthecaregiver.com. We're continuing on our series of America's caregiver, but I want to show you how these principles do apply across the board into other areas of our lives. Now, the first block, we talked about boundaries. Clearly our country has boundary issues.

I mean, you know, it's like, what, 80 percent on the list of all the things that people have on their mind for this election season is the southern border and the, or more accurately, the lack of a southern border. And boundaries is a huge part of our life as caregivers, as human beings, okay? As human beings, we have to have healthy boundaries in our lives, period, with every relationship we have. You know, the first boundaries ever set were set by God when it comes to not only the human race, but he set boundaries with the fallen angels.

They were cast out. First boundaries ever set were set by God. And we can follow that model that we set healthy boundaries about things that will harm us, whether it's from behaviors, whether it's from a toxic relationship, toxic work environments, and so forth. We have boundaries to protect us for healthiness. Well, that makes sense to us as caregivers.

Does it make sense to us as a nation? Well, it ought to. The principle doesn't break down. Boundaries make sense.

You know, Robert Frost said that in good fences make good neighbors. You know, I mean, it's pretty simple. And yet we've lost our way on this for whatever reason.

And you can fill in the blanks for whatever reason, and you can ascribe it to however you feel like to do. I'll just simply say the principle of healthy boundaries works. It works for us as caregivers. It works for us as human beings.

It works for us as a nation. Okay. Anybody wants to argue with that, send an email to Peter at the internet.google.

So I'm just kidding. The second one is our identity. If we don't know who we are, then how are we going to be able to function? How long can you get lost in something else other than who you are before everything starts to unravel?

How many of you all as caregivers have felt this way? Where you've just lost yourself in this. You don't know who you are anymore.

It's someone else's life at your expense. Do you think that's happening across our country? Do we know who we are as a country anymore? If you had to say, this is what the United States of America is all about, and we hear all these words like diversity and inclusion and intersectionality and all these kinds of gobbledygook words, which mean nothing. We come from diverse backgrounds, but the country has an identity. And if you want to know what that is, you could go and look at first at the founding documents. The Declaration of Independence would be a great place to start. Then you go to the Constitution. Who are we as a people? Why was this country created? And people often, and particularly the media and academia, want to get this all stirred up by saying, well, we had this birth defect of slavery when this country was founded.

But if you look at our documents, in order to form a more perfect union, there was an implication we're not starting out perfect. But these founding principles are what guided our nation for hundreds of years. And all of a sudden we want to throw those out.

Why? Don't they work anymore? Well, yeah, they work.

They work every time. Tell me one thing that is improved by not having healthy boundaries. One thing.

You can't. There's nothing that's improved by not having healthy boundaries. Tell me something that is improved by not knowing who you are.

It doesn't exist. Nothing is improved by that. And we can deceive ourselves with all kinds of things, and there's no deception like self-deception, but it still doesn't change the fact that nothing is improved if you don't know who you are. And this brings me to my last point of things that help a nation that we as caregivers rely upon. And I'm saying this in my official capacity as America's caregiver. But we hear this word a lot in our culture when it comes to climate change and everything else, but sustainability. Sustainability. Now, when I say that word to you, what does that conjure up in your mind?

You know, again, we have a lot of that with the climate and resources and all that kind of stuff. Well, does that break down when you talk about a nation? It doesn't break down when you talk about a caregiver. How many of you all feel that at times as a caregiver, you have been doing things that were unsustainable and you knew it and you had to change? Every one of you that's a caregiver ought to be raising your hands right now.

I'm raising mine because I've been there, done that, got the t-shirt, because we've all done it. It's unsustainable. Well, does that principle break down from an individual to a nation?

Does it break down from an individual to a church? If you spend more than you have, if your outflow is greater than your inflow, how long before you're done? Give me an example of how that principle ever fails. We are finite people and we have finite resources. And if we spend them without any kind of stewardship, then we're going to run out. This is not brain surgery.

Okay? We know this as caregivers. We know this. We have to be good stewards of our resources. And part of that is you have to identify what your resources are. It's not just money. You are your loved one's greatest physical resource. Your ingenuity, your mind, your body, your wallet, all of those things.

I mean, think about that. You all know my story with Gracie. How has her life improved if I deplete everything I have?

Are her needs going to go away? Is she going to say, okay, I got it from here? Is that, does that how it works?

Okay, I got it from here. Is that, does that how it works? Well, multiply that out times a nation. How is this world a better place if the United States runs out of money and runs out of resources and is depleted as a nation?

Do you know that we've evacuated seven embassies in the last three and a half years? How is that a good thing? What are we doing about that? How does the world benefit from a diminished United States? Now some say, well, at least we won't be starting any wars.

Well, I agree with that. I'm tired of starting these overseas wars that have just sapped our blood and our treasure, our, you know, how many people have died on the altar of war, stupid wars, senseless wars? How many wars have we been involved in in the last 75 years that have produced any kind of positive change in this world?

You know, I spent a lot of time at the beginning of the war on terror when we went into Afghanistan and Iraq and Gracie and I were back and forth to Walter Reed a lot and I saw the implications of that. And what do we have to show for it? You saw the pullout of Afghanistan. Everybody give a thumbs up to that?

You all feel good about that? Look at the carnage. Look at the lives. I've seen the soldiers coming back. I've seen the families of these soldiers.

I've seen the families that disintegrated with that. What do we have to show for this? For all that money, all those lives and the lives that were lost and the lives that were were permanently mutilated and maimed and disabled.

You know, I see the commercials all the time for Tunnel to Towers and I love that organization and I see these young men. Gracie just balls every time she sees it because she sees young men and women with similar injuries to hers and she just looks at them. She said, you know, she looks over and makes her say, hey, you giving to those people?

And I said, yes, yes, darling, I am. Because they're doing something that is extraordinary. But I can't help but think about what did we gain from this?

How sustainable is this for us to be spread so thin around the world trying to get in there and mess with other people's countries and everything else? You understand the question? If somebody came to me and said, Peter, we want you to take your money and your time and you come over here and take care of this person now. And the first question I'm going to ask is, well, what about Gracie? Well, she'll be all right.

You got to come over and do this too. How sustainable is that? What's going to happen? Everybody suffers at that point. I have to take care of the responsibility and the charge that God has given me.

I have to be a good steward and I have to use wisdom and discernment. As a country, are we doing that? And if not, why not? And if not, what are we doing about it to change that?

Are you involved in making a difference in that? Are we just going to sit around and, you know, wait for Jesus to return? Is that what we're here to do?

I don't see anywhere in scripture that supports us. I think we're supposed to be vigilant and we're supposed to watch for it. But in the meantime, we have work to do. We're in the business of ministering to people in their distress. And the only inexhaustible resource is that from God.

God is never going to run out of resources and we can lean on Him for our direction and our sustenance. But all through scripture, we're asked to be good stewards. Are we being a good steward of this country? Are we being a good steward of this nation?

Is this sustainable? Are each and every one of you all voting? If not, why not?

If you are legally entitled to vote and you do not, why aren't you? I mean, that's the least thing we can do. That's the smallest step is to show up and vote. And so do we vote in every election to make sure that we're doing our part? And then there's more we can do because we're being good stewards of this. And scripture affirms us that we pray for peace in the land. We pray for the leaders over.

We be a part of the community. We don't segregate ourselves from it. That's not sustainable. If we're the salt in the light of the earth as Christians, are we hiding that under a bushel? And if we are, is that sustainable?

No, it is not. And we as caregivers more than anyone else should understand the challenges and the consequences of the word unsustainable. We know what this means. It is incumbent upon us to share what we know, to provide insight for others, to be able to learn, to teach them.

That's the whole point. So as we become healthier caregivers, can we use that then to export to help make America a healthier nation? I say we can. And who am I? I'll tell you who I am. I'm America's caregiver.

This is Peter Rosenberg and 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.

Glad to have you with us. Hopeforthecaregiver.com. Hopeforthecaregiver.com. Let me tell you about a little girl named Dorcas. I first met Dorcas back in 2006. Her father brought her into the clinic in Ghana where we do our prosthetic limb outreach.

This is what Gracie envisioned after giving up both of her legs. And so we went on our first trip in 2005. We went back that summer again. We was in March in that summer.

Then the next spring I went over there with another team and this is with our youngest son, my nephew, and some others. And that's when we met Dorcas. She was five years old when she came in. Dorcas has what is called a Syme's amputation. You know what that is? It's when the amputation is done through the ankle joint. The foot is removed for most of it, but the heel pad is left. So that the patient could put weight on the leg without a prosthesis, okay?

That's the basic definition of it. You say, why would they do that? Well, for somebody who's blind and so forth, they can weight bear on that limb if they can't get a hold of their prosthesis or something like that. There's a lot of different reasons why and surgical reasons.

I'm not a big fan of them because they make it very difficult to provide a quality prosthesis. But years ago, prosthesis were not as advanced as they are now. And so anyway, Dorcas had a Syme's amputation. And somewhere along the line, she had gotten a prosthetic limb, but she, like every little kid, was growing and she was growing out of the leg, but she was still wearing it. And her amputated limb wasn't fitting all the way down in this. And so it was kind of bent at the knee. She was kind of crab walking. And we all just immediately just, our heart stopped because we thought, this little girl is going to snap her leg any second now with that kind of weight on it.

And so we got rid of that limb and we made her a new one. And she did not have any shoes, proper shoes. So I went over to the little market and bought her some shoes. We had to, I took a foot with me. I told you, I go into the shoe store and get Gracie's shoes.

Well, there was a little, well, it wasn't really a little one. It was a big outdoor market. And I went down this one row where they have just these open-air shops and they just had all kinds of shoes that I dug through to find the right size shoe for little Dorcas. She had the sandals, basically. And to give the kind of prosthesis we're going to give, she needed to have better shoes. So I actually bought her a couple pairs and our prosthetist that was with us, Randy, was working on building her leg and we built her a new leg that fit her properly that her Siam's amputation could go all the way into.

And it was safer and it fit her and she was able to walk on it and do great. And then over the years, she continues to come back and we continue to provide a limb for her as she grows. She's drawn into a beautiful young woman and she's gone to school. She has a job now and she's, I mean, she's just living life. She's living life on a leg that we were able to provide through Standing With Hope. Standing With Hope is the presenting sponsor of this program. It is the ministry that Gracie and I founded many, many years ago.

And our mission is for the wounded and those who care for them. And I remember having this conversation with Dorcas' father. Her mother was never in the picture. I think she had some type of mental illness or something.

I'm not totally sure what happened with her, but she was not in Dorcas' life. But her father brought her year after year to the clinic. Every time our team was there, we'd come and just review to make sure she's got everything she needs, that her leg fit her. We would sometimes didn't have to change the leg. We'd have to change the foot though, because if her left foot was growing, which it was, well, she needed to have balance for the right. So we would have to get her a new foot. And those feet were special kind of feet to go with Assam's amputation, Assam's prosthesis. And we depend on those feet coming in from all kinds of places through our canvassing of the country for used prosthetic limbs. You can go to our website, standingwithhope.com, and on the tab at the top, it says prosthetics. There's a little pull down and you just select donate a used limb and it'll teach you what needs to happen for that limb to be donated. We collect limbs from all over the country, from all kinds of people, from all kinds of walks of life. We get funeral homes that send us limbs, prosthetic shops that have the parts and so forth that they will donate to us. We'll collect anything.

I'm working right now with a company that manufactures carbon fiber. We're hoping we can get another roll of this. I'll let you know. We got to buy a vacuum pump, which is going to be kind of expensive. We're working out that right now. There's probably going to be a couple thousand dollars to do what we need to do for this.

And these are all things. See, we'll make the limb custom made for Dorcas and other patients on site, but we can use recycled parts to help fabricate it. So if she needs a new foot, well, we just replace the foot, but we don't have to replace the whole socket. That was custom fit for Dorcas and it usually lasts, once a child is full, grown about seven years. Gracie gets a new socket, you know, about every six to seven years, depending on how active she is.

For a child though, you're having to replace it pretty regularly. Now Dorcas has grown. She's, you know, a 20 something year old young woman now, so she's not going to be growing anymore. So, but for, for many years, we would build her a new leg every year. And we wanted to make sure she had an opportunity to go to school and live a productive life. And it, I got to tell you, when I go over there and see it, I've known this girl since she was five years old and just to be able to see her and see the life she's lived. And I've got to, I'm looking forward to getting back over there soon. I'm just going to see if I can track her down and see if she's getting married now and have children because I haven't seen her in a couple of years.

And I want to just see her. Her life was transformed because of a prosthetic leg, because Gracie trusted God with her loss of legs and said, I want to do something about this. And it's been a remarkable journey.

And I could tell you more patients like this that you get to know over a lifetime. That's the, that's the unusual thing about prosthetics. It's not a first responder. If a country is torn up by war, you have to wait for things to settle down because you have to build a lab and you have to build these things and then you have to maintain them. So it's, it's very difficult to do this in war torn places until things have settled down politically and you have a sustainable, again, that word sustainable infrastructure to be able to do this. But that's what we've had in Ghana. And we have patients that come from as far away as Nigeria and you get to know these patients, you get to know their families and, and see them as they grow and they go to school and they go back to work. Or I've seen women who come in, their children have helped them come in and then they get back to going into their life and taking care of their families. And their, their joy is, it's hard to express it until you see it. I've seen men that have come in that look defeated.

I remember one, one man came in and we put a leg on him and he put his trousers on and he stood there in front of the mirror and just looked at himself standing there on two legs for the first time in years. And I could just see the dignity coming back into his life. His name was D. Boyd.

Sadly, D. Boyd passed away some years ago. He was one of our first patients and he had a lot of sickness in his life, but we, for the last several years of his life, we gave him the opportunity to stand and walk and be with his children. I watched his children dancing around him and his wife carried him in on her back into the clinic. She carried him on her back. And when we put this leg on him, I mean, I wish you could have seen the look on his face.

They're just a precious family. And we want to do more. I want to do more. And so we, we provide equipment, we provide materials, we provide parts and components and all these things. And we get this to the clinic there in Ghana, the staff there led by a wonderful man named Moses Coho. And we have another clinic we partner with sometimes too. Joseph, he does some things that are very, very difficult cases at times too. He used to work at this clinic and he's got his own practice now as well. And so sometimes we send very, very difficult patients to him who, who, you know, if they've had a severe burns, have a lot of scarring and things such as that.

And so we've got two clinics that we partner with there to send patients to, and we sponsor those patients, but we put the priority on children and active adults who can use the slim to get up and get back into life. And when Dorcas came in that day, I, you know, our hearts stopped when we saw how dangerous this was for her to be on this. And her father and I have developed just such a friendship over the years. He's, he's a very sweet man doing the best he can to take care of his daughter with a disability. He's not a man of means by any stretch of the imagination. I don't think he's even literate, but he loved his daughter and it was such a treat to be able to, to serve them and to provide this.

And the look on his face was, it was deeply meaningful. There's not a lot of dry eyes over there when people get up and start walking, and particularly if it's their kid. And, and, you know, they didn't have any hope. I mean, they were poor and not poor by American standards.

I'm talking about poor. And this is, this is what we do at Standing With Hope. Gracie wanted to do something for her fellow amputees. I wanted to do something for my fellow caregivers to extend the same grace and comfort that had been given to us. And if you want to be a part of that with us, we would very much welcome that. You can go out to standingwithhope.com slash giving, standingwithhope.com slash giving today, and you can be a part of that. And it is, well, let me just say this. They go walking and leaping and praising God. And it is a, it is such a privilege to do it.

So thank you for letting me share Dorcas with you. And I will have more patients that we'll talk about. If you give somebody a limb, they'll walk. If you teach and equip somebody how to make limbs, hundreds will walk. And if you point them to Christ while doing all of it, you're equipping them to continue standing with hope. This is Peter Rosenberger. Thanks so much for joining us today. Hopeforthecaregiver.com. We'll see you next week.