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>> And I thank God for giving me this opportunity. I come from India. I represent a small organization
Jesus Enables Ministries. We not only give computer training for disabled persons, but
also find them jobs and at the same time give them the Gospel of love. So, but we are reaching
out to only .1% of the huge number of disabled people in India, 17 million.
So I will talk from my perspective about how the global challenges are affecting people
with disabilities. If you take India, we have both the cities where things are very much
better, but the rural side is still suffering with poverty and other difficulties. If you
take the villages, accessibility is very low so – and also the attitude of the people
there is like usually according to the Hindu philosophy, it is a karma or a sin of the
previous birth that they are born disabled. So the family is not very happy about including
a disabled person. There is always a sort of – as Steve said, it’s a burden to have
them in the family.
And actually in the previous census they said that the families did not even want to mention
the disabled person as an entity in the family. So that is the situation there. And to think
of poverty where the earning member itself is having difficult for their food and other
things, to support somebody else, it’s very difficult. So they always think – I have
heard students, some parents come and tell me, I wish my daughter was dead, right in
front of them. See how difficult it will be for that child. So that is the attitude of
people. They think can I send this person somewhere? Can I just go and leave them somewhere?
Will somebody else take care? So that is a difficult situation.
And, of course, abuse is also very much there, because when a person is dependent on somebody
for their daily basic needs, we can see how much they can abuse them not only physically,
emotionally. Every day it can be really very tough living in such an atmosphere of bitterness
and anger and so many difficult situations. So, neglect and abuse is very much a part
of a disabled person.
And if you take a disabled girl, I have seen so many girls come up and tell that they have
been asked – young girls have been asked to just become a wife of the sister’s husband
or something like that. So there is a lot of *** abuse also going on. And there is
no voice for these young disabled girls to stand up for themselves. So that is the situation
there.
>> Thank you. Did you want to address any of these other questions or do you feel like
you summed it up there?
>> Actually, I want to tell one thing. Like, churches should come forward to include disabled
people. That is one thing which is very much lacking, because if you take the world population
and the percentage of disabled people, it is somewhere like 8% to 10%. That means if
there are 100 people in a church, there must be at least eight persons with disabilities.
But where are they?
If the church is not going to include them, who will include them? So the church – God
has told us that we should love our neighbor as ourselves, so if we can each of us can
take one minute and think, if I am in that position, if I am a person who cannot see,
if I am a person who cannot hear, or if I am a person using a wheelchair, what will
I want? How should I be treated?
So we teach people with visual impairment also computers. So many times we have to put
ourselves in that place and say okay, if I’m like this, then how I should be? That is what
the Bible says, you have to treat others as yourself. So every time we – the church
has to see to it that the disabled people are included.
One thing is physically they have a limitation, emotionally there is so much of – what do
you say, so much of discrimination everywhere that a disabled person goes. And spiritually
nobody really cares. The church is comfortable ignoring the whole group. They just want to
go on as if nothing, there is no disabled person in society.
So I think we should encourage our youth groups especially to go out to reach out. Actually
in the Bible Jesus went to the person who was a paralytic for 38 years. He went there
and then cured him. Four friends brought the paralytic man through the roof. So we need
four people to bring disabled people into the church, into the Gospel, to take the Gospel
to them, so we have to reach out. You can’t just sit in the church and say maybe they
should come to church. It is not going to happen. We have to go out.
So given this opportunity I want to just say please, look around, and when you find a person
with a disability, please reach out, be the first to go and talk, first to be genuinely
concerned about their needs and genuinely, if you show your love, I’m sure they will
accept the love of Jesus very soon. Thank you.