Steve: When I was a boy, my dad and four of his missionary friends were speared to death by a tribe of Indians in the jungles in Ecuador. 20 years ago, those same people asked me to go back there and live with them again. They wanted me to teach them to do things like medical work and how to fix and maintain equipment, and how to fly airplanes and things like that, that they wanted to do so that they could take care of their own people's spiritual and physical need. That's when we started the organization called the Indigenous People's Technology and Education Center, which is what I've been doing for the last 18 years.
Two years ago, I was experimenting with an aircraft wing that I thought would be helpful for use by people like the Huaorani. Unfortunately, the straps that I had holding the wing down to a car broke and the wing hit me on top of the head very, very hard and caused a significant spinal injury, which is what put me in the hospital and in a rehab hospital for a couple of months.
Jamie: Because of the severity of the spinal cord injury that my dad had, it really required my mom to be at the hospital around the clock. So, they asked me if I would work with Medi-Share to deal with all the bills that would come from this. Working with Medi-Share was a joy, right from the beginning. They were very helpful, understanding. They began to pray for my dad and even asked if they could put my dad's case out for the prayer list so that everybody across the Medi-Share member list could be praying for my dad. After my dad got out of rehab and began doing outpatient rehab, Medi-Share contacted me and said, "How's your dad doing? Does he need more visits? How are the visits? Is he seeing improvement?"
Steve: One experience in my relationship with Medi-Share really stands out. That is that one of the directors actually came to visit us here at iTech to find out what our needs were, and that kind of personal relationship with a group of people who meet together to share each other's needs is extremely unusual. I like that. What attracted me to Medi-Share in the first place was the idea of people helping people directly, rather than helping an institution who then would help people. Now that I've had this experience, I really appreciate the fact that it is personal and that it is people helping me rather than an insurance company helping me.
The Bible in Second Corinthians 8, verse 14, talks about people helping each other in their time of need. It says, "At this present time, your abundance being a supply for their want, that their abundance also may become a supply for your want, that there may be equality." Christian care/Medi-Share comes as close to that as any program I've ever seen.
