Rotary Club of Redding, California

Thursday, Noon
Rotary District #5160

In March 2008, a team of 5 flew to District # 4280 in Colombia, South America and spent a week fitting and training the local amputees to use this artificial hand device. Here are their stories and life time experience.

    To see more pictures, please goto Photo Gallery

    There were quite a variety of stories about how the hand recipients had lost their hand or both hands.  There were some that stood out like the lady that had very patiently waited for hours and was the last one on the list. She told me that her husband had been on drugs and tried to kill her.  He slashed her body 72 times.  She tried to protect herself and had one of her hands cut off and her other hand had some fingers missing.  There was the young man, 16 years old that had been working  with electrical wires and burned off both of his hands.  Once his hand was fitted, he started to write and draw pictures.  He could not stop!  He just wanted to stay there and write his name over and over and draw hearts for his girlfriend! His mother was so overwhelmed to see him writing again that she started to cry and needless to say both Keli and I cried with her; sharing her happiness to see her child be self sufficient once more.

   One other hand recipient that stood out was a young man who had lost not only his hand but his eyesight with dynamite.  He was working in construction and had the accident.  We were amazed to see how quickly he caught on how to work the hand, he just started feeling it and before we knew it he was a pro! As he was leaving I gave him a hug and with his Colombian accent  he said “I love you” in English!!  All the hand recipients were so grateful to get the hand that many wept and as they were leaving would bless all of us and would say that we were angels sent from heaven to help the poor.

    I could go on and on, but I am sure the other LN-4 members have more to add.  I did not even cover going to the orphanage where I fell in love with a baby girl and wanted to bring her home with me, plus many more stories about our LN-4 hand project in Colombia.

Keli Anthis:

    Wow, what an adventure!

    This Rotary "mission" was an opportunity of a life time and I am so grateful to have been able to travel with such a remarkable team!

    Everyone was a pleasure to be with and our entire team wanted nothing more than to contribute a life changing experience to the LN-4 recipients.

...I said before I left that if our team could provide a hand and make life better for just one person then we would have completed our mission.

    I can honestly say we have assisted in this mission many times over!

The recipients were so grateful, appreciative, and humble...but they gave us back much more than we could ever give to them.

    It is with sincere gratitude that I thank our president, our club, and our team (including the receiving clubs in Colombia) that granted me the opportunity to participate.

Tiger Michiels:

Look at a live body mangled or deformed,
A life full of shame and despair,
Touch where few have ventured,
And ask what works? Do you feel pain?
See into the eyes, sharing one's love, bearing both souls.

Fitting and teaching how to use a new hand,
To grasp, write, eat, clean, and use where use has been denied.

One woman lost an arm fending off a machete attack,
With her new hand she could now hold a rag and clean her home,
She kissed our hands.

One man hid his arm from his wife with a shawl, for life,
With his new hand he swung the shawl up in the air,
And danced, full of joy, full of life!

Many smiles, many hugs, many tears,
We will share in our minds for years.

Thank you members of the Rotary Club of Redding,
For your "I'll give a hand" help,

Thanks to our Colombian volunteers,
And our Rotaract/Rotary friends,
97 people now have a hand.

Our shared love and goodwill,
Will live on in the green mountains and valleys,
Of coffee and sugar cane.

Viva Colombia!

 

Jason Montague:

    In what foreign travel I have been fortunate to engage in, I have never enjoyed an experience like Colombia.

    The country is of course beautiful beyond description and we were treated to many of the country’s unique flavors, sights and sounds. I will leave it to the photographs to tell that story. What made the difference in Colombia were the people we met and worked with.

    The heart of Colombia Rotary is very warm. Never have I enjoyed such generous hospitality.  Everyone we met lavished us with sincere and heartfelt gratitude for our presence and our mission. The ties of Rotary brotherhood are truly international. We were treated as family and honored guests. The work we came to do was immense and could never have been accomplished without the months of preplanning and groundwork done by our Colombian partners.

    I have to single out the young men and women of Tulua and Cali Rotoract.  They were nothing less than impressive. The in-depth and exhaustive preparations they undertook prior to and during our stay paved the way for a clean, effective and successful clinic. More so, they demonstrated a profound and tireless commitment to their local community with a complement of projects and events they engage in year-round.

    They were smart, organized, energized and highly motivated.  They worked as a team and regarded each other as family. I made friends there I will keep for a lifetime. As a parent I cannot help but think how proud of my own children I will be if they turn out half as well as these young adults. If these are the future leaders of Colombia and the world, the future looks very bright.

    As a relatively new Rotarian I felt honored and privileged to be part of such an important undertaking. Not to be forgotten amongst the wonderful friends I made were my own American teammates. They represented Rotary at its best and from them I learned a tremendous amount about the form, function and heart of Rotary.

Mark Rincon:

     I am so proud of our LN4 team from Redding Rotary. The excitement of the unknown and hopefulness of doing good for others was predominant of our thoughts. What joy to see the excitement on those faces receiving such a gift we thought so small but would provide such profound changes of independence and freedom. While our gifts of a hand provided by our Redding Rotary friends and others would bring a positive change of life for those recipients, indeed the change has also happened to us. The truth is, “it is better to give than to receive for by doing so are you changed”.

     Men smile at the ability to write again. Parents cry seeing their child become whole with the ability to ride a bicycle. Others break out is dance and sing praises to God for the gifts these strangers bring without any thought of reward. But the dance was our reward. Who will ever forget those smiles and the tears will always be shared by those that were there. Thank you Redding Rotary for the opportunity to represent you in Colombia.