{"id":22028,"date":"2026-03-11T12:16:25","date_gmt":"2026-03-11T12:16:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gpbookstore.org\/articles\/uncategorized\/inspirational-story-finding-a-way-to-make\/"},"modified":"2026-04-10T06:13:25","modified_gmt":"2026-04-10T06:13:25","slug":"inspirational-story-finding-a-way-to-make","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gpbookstore.org\/articles\/positive-living\/health-and-wellness\/better-living\/emotional-and-mental-health\/inspirational-story-finding-a-way-to-make\/","title":{"rendered":"Inspirational Story: Finding a Way to Make a Difference"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Africa-bound! And only seven hours left of a 19-hour flight before I would arrive in South Africa for my third volunteer trip in three years. But this time it was different. I tried to get some sleep, but couldn\u2019t. The doubts had begun to creep in. <em>I\u2019m doing this for the kids<\/em>, I reminded myself. I didn\u2019t want to worry about traveling to an orphanage in a remote area, or the fact that I was going alone, without friends or family. Or that I\u2019d be there for a whole year, not just a summer. But I couldn\u2019t help worrying. Plus, I had one challenge other volunteers fighting AIDS in Africa didn\u2019t\u2014I was in a wheelchair.<\/p>\n<p>At eight years old, I was paralyzed from the waist down in a car accident. I spent months in an Easter Seals rehabilitation hospital, learning how to use a wheelchair, how to get up from the floor and how to dress myself. Basically how to live my life as independently as possible. My first day home, I found the usual list of chores on my bed. \u201cThings happen,\u201d Mom said, \u201cbut our responsibilities to ourselves and others don\u2019t change.\u201d Making my bed and cleaning my room took forever. But I could still do them, just a little differently than before the accident. I could still do a lot of things. Like swing on the uneven bars in gymnastics, as long as my coach boosted me up. Or be a part of the Friday night family dance parties my mom, dad, sister and I always had. Dad popped in a Beach Boys CD. \u201cSurfin\u2019 U.S.A.\u201d came on. I pumped my arms in the air and twisted in my seat. At 16 I got a driver\u2019s license like all my friends\u2014only I had a car with hand controls.<\/p>\n<div class=\"elementor-element elementor-element-ada4f91 e-con-full e-flex e-con e-child\" data-id=\"ada4f91\" data-element_type=\"container\" id=\"home-banner-stn\">\n<div class=\"elementor-element elementor-element-72e6e8eb elementor-widget elementor-widget-heading\" data-id=\"72e6e8eb\" data-element_type=\"widget\" data-widget_type=\"heading.default\">\n<div class=\"elementor-widget-container\">\n<h2 class=\"elementor-heading-title elementor-size-default\">Community Newsletter<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"elementor-element elementor-element-261bcec elementor-widget elementor-widget-heading\" data-id=\"261bcec\" data-element_type=\"widget\" data-widget_type=\"heading.default\">\n<div class=\"elementor-widget-container\">\n<h3 class=\"elementor-heading-title elementor-size-default\">Get More Inspiration Delivered to Your Inbox<\/h3>\n<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"elementor-element elementor-element-9787b46 elementor-widget__width-initial elementor-widget-mobile__width-inherit elementor-widget elementor-widget-wp-widget-ninja_forms_widget\" data-id=\"9787b46\" data-element_type=\"widget\" id=\"front-banner-signup\" data-widget_type=\"wp-widget-ninja_forms_widget.default\">\n<div class=\"elementor-widget-container\">\n\t\t\t\t\t<noscript class=\"ninja-forms-noscript-message\"><br \/>\n\tNotice: JavaScript is required for this content.<\/noscript><\/p>\n<style>\n<p>        \/* FORM STYLES *\/<\/p>\n<p>        #nf-form-5-cont {\n                                    background-color:#ffffff;\n                                                    border-radius:35px;\n-webkit-border-radius:35px;                    }\n    <\/style>\n<style>\n<p>        \/* FIELDS STYLES *\/<\/p>\n<p>        .nf-form-content .nf-field-container #nf-field-27-wrap {\n                                            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\/>\n                <script id=\"nf-tmpl-cell\" type=\"text\/template\">\n            <nf-fields><\/nf-fields>\n        <\/script><\/p>\n<p>        <script id=\"nf-tmpl-row\" type=\"text\/template\">\n            <nf-cells><\/nf-cells>\n        <\/script><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>Junior year at college, three friends and I volunteered at a Christian orphanage in Durban, South Africa, that took in abandoned babies with HIV. More than a third of the population in the KwaZulu-Natal province had the virus. This was bigger and scarier than anything I\u2019d ever dealt with. But I felt a pull like I\u2019d never felt before. <em>I\u2019m needed here. I know that\u2019s what God is telling me. <\/em>That I had a responsibility to oth\u00aders and that I could make a difference.<\/p>\n<p>A church in Durban arranged for a driver to take my friends and me back and forth from our host family to the orphanage. Most buildings were one story, and my friends carried me up the rare staircase or big hill. I fed the babies, rocked them to sleep, prayed by their beds, administered medicine. I returned the next summer with my sister. My chair was never an issue.<\/p>\n<p><em>I can do more<\/em>, I thought. This time, after graduation, I made a year-long commitment to Lily of the Valley Children\u2019s Village, outside Mophela, South Africa, where 90 percent of the children are infected with HIV. I would see to the kids\u2019 medical needs and teach math and English.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou can\u2019t find a friend to go with you?\u201d Mom asked.<\/p>\n<p>I assured her that I could do plenty by myself. Still\u2026I didn\u2019t tell anyone at Lily of the Valley about my wheelchair. I wasn\u2019t sure they would approve. As far as they knew, I was like any other young volunteer who comes over to help out.<\/p>\n<p>Now I stared at the bulkhead in front of me, wishing that the jet engines could drown out my doubts. Who would help me if I got stuck? Would I prove to be more of a burden than a help? <em>Okay, God, <\/em>I finally prayed, <em>I\u2019ll go anywhere you want, but you have to be my legs.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Soon enough, I arrived in Mophela. People stared at me from the doorways of mud huts. Out in the overworked fields, farmers\u2019 heads turned. Even a skinny cow that wandered across the dirt road seemed to gawk at me. It was a bumpy drive from the town to the children\u2019s village, a circle of one-story houses bordering a game reserve. Wildebeests and giraffes strolled by in the distance. The driver brought my chair around. I climbed in and wheeled into the village.<\/p>\n<p>Kids came up to me, touching my chair curiously. A woman ran out of a cottage shouting in Zulu. The children scattered.<\/p>\n<p>The woman in charge looked baffled, but she was too polite to say anything about my chair. She showed me through the children\u2019s village\u201422 cottages, each one with a house mother and six children\u2014to the small house where I would be staying. The ground was flat but sandy. My wheels sank and slipped. I strained my arms to get going again.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDo you need help?\u201d the woman asked.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNo, I got it,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n<p>That afternoon, I met the six, seven and eight-year-olds in my \u201chomework club.\u201d The kids often missed class due to illness, and the schools were overcrowded, so extra instruction was needed. I read books to them and drew pictures. I asked dozens of questions. They just stared at the ground, not saying a word.<\/p>\n<p>Those first few weeks were hard, harder than anything I had done before. Sometimes the kids went home with relatives, neglected to take their meds and came back sick. In class, some remained shy, others listless. I forced myself to keep trying. I needed to prove myself. But how could I tell if I was doing any good?<\/p>\n<p>One night, a big storm hit, the only rain Lily had seen in weeks. I rolled out of my cottage the next morning and my chair lurched, the wheels sinking into mud. I gripped the wheels tight and pushed hard. The chair wouldn\u2019t budge.<\/p>\n<p>All of my worst worries seemed to be coming true. The problems I\u2019d come to fight were too big. I was stuck, hopelessly stuck. I was alone. And a burden to people whose lives were already so heartbreakingly hard.<\/p>\n<p>Out of the corner of my eye, I saw people running toward me. Children, some older ones, some younger. Two of the oldest grabbed the handlebars and the others pushed me forward. The wheels came free. The kids shouted with delight.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThank you!\u201d I said, surprised. \u201cAren\u2019t you sweet!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The children laughed. \u201cYou help us,\u201d one of the older boys said. \u201cWe help you.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><em>You help us. We help you. <\/em>That echoed in my ears all day. The next morning, there was a knock at my door. \u201cMiss Harston, can we help you?\u201d I opened up. The kids were waiting to push me through the mud to homework club.<\/p>\n<p>The next day, same thing. And the day after that. It became our little ritual. In class, two six-year-old boys decided it was their job to help me up from sitting with them on the floor.<br \/>\nThe more they helped me, the easier it got to help them. The kids and I bonded. One day, I tore open a care package from my parents\u2014on top was a CD: The Beach Boys. Soon we were having after-homework-club dance parties. Sometimes the kids came over to my house. We baked cookies and they sat on my couch, practicing English by reading Bible stories. The children\u2019s favorite was David and Goliath. \u201cEven the smallest of us can overcome the worst things,\u201d I told them. Weren\u2019t we all living the story now? Fighting the giants of AIDS and poverty?<\/p>\n<p>I wasn\u2019t alone during my year in Africa. Not at all. I\u2019d asked God to be my legs, and he\u2019d sent the very people I was helping to help me. He\u2019d shown me, more than ever, that anyone, even in a wheelchair, can make a difference.\n <\/p>\n<p><em>Download your FREE ebook, <a href=\"http:\/\/guideposts.org\/free-ebooks\/true-inspirational-stories-9-real-life-stories-hope-and-faith\/download\">True Inspirational Stories: 9 Real Life Stories of Hope &amp; Faith<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Africa-bound! And only seven hours left of a 19-hour flight before I would arrive in South Africa for my third volunteer trip in three years. But this time it was different. I tried to get some sleep, but couldn\u2019t. The doubts had begun to creep in. I\u2019m doing this for the kids, I reminded myself. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":29660,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[377],"tags":[],"ppma_author":[970],"class_list":["post-22028","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-emotional-and-mental-health"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v26.6 (Yoast SEO v27.4) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Inspirational Story: Finding a Way to Make a Difference - Guideposts Articles<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"noindex, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Inspirational Story: Finding a Way to Make a Difference\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Africa-bound! 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