When I first came to work here, I got a tour and was told that my responsibility was to do triage with medical equipment and the community members coming in requesting to borrow it. At Love In the Name of Christ, those who reside in Hudsonville, Jenison or Grandville can loan various medical equipment for free from the items we have in stock. There’s a good chance you would be blown away at how often someone will come in searching for something we have in stock, and by the end of the day, that very item will show up.
This situation prevailed with enough regularity that I was mad I didn’t start keeping hash marks with how often it happened!
One day, an occupational therapist came in looking for a geri chair. She explained it was a tragic situation. As so often happens, this particular woman had been dropped off by her family who hadn’t visited her since. Our receptionist started doing research, trying to determine if we had this piece of medical equipment.
One of our main medical volunteers said we used to carry geri chairs, but they were never used, we couldn’t sell them and they just sat in the Outback for weeks.
However, that same afternoon, we were short on other medical items so we began restocking the shelves. Meanwhile, in the drop off area sat a geri chair which had been dropped off the previous day.
The woman mentioned above had no mobility without a geri chair, so her need was urgent. Unfortunately, we had no delivery volunteers able to get it delivered, but two of our other volunteers put it in their own van and delivered it that day, being blessed to be such a blessing to this woman in need.
Since then, there have been many more instances of God providing items we’ll need – before we even know we need them.