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Sue Pimentel

IT was a moment that Sue Pimentel will never forget.

She was in a home for disabled children in Albania when she saw a five-year-old boy in a cot. He was deaf and blind, and as she picked him up, he felt like a bag of bones. She just cried.

The previous year, no one had been able to help him. He had screamed every time he was picked up, so he just used to lie in bed whimpering all day. This time Sue got a special buggy and made a support for his head and body using pieces of foam that she glued together.

"I made it so that he would be able to feel the foam all around him and hopefully feel secure," she said. "I left him that day sat quietly in the buggy for the first time in the five years of his life. I found it so heartbreaking and I still can't talk about him without crying - but what a privilege to have had the opportunity of doing something like that."

This is one of the ways that Sue - a grandmother from St Paul's Church, Barton, near Newport - has shown her faith. Albania is one of the countries in which she has handed over wheelchairs to disabled people whose families could never afford one.

The project is called Wheels for the World, and is run by the charity Through The Roof. It restores and distributes second-hand wheelchairs to those in developing countries to demonstrate God's love in a practical way. Many of the wheelchairs are restored by inmates at Parkhurst Prison on the Isle of Wight. Through The Roof is linked to the worldwide organisation of disabled author Joni Eareckson Tada.

Sue works as an occupational therapist, fitting people for wheelchairs and helping them to use them. It was a work colleague who suggested that she use those skills in developing countries. At first Sue thought she couldn't possibly go without her family, but she has now been to Albania (in 2000), Jordan (2001) and the Ukraine (2002), Jordan again (2003) and South Africa (2004).

"Someone will ask for wheelchairs and the organisation will get a lorry of them and collect together a team of therapists, technicians and an administrator to go there," she said. "We try to work with local churches, and we also try to give people Bibles - though we weren't allowed to do that in Jordan.

In Albania, we would work from 8 in the morning until 8 at night. All the chairs had to be fitted for each individual and in many cases we were also building seating systems into them for children who couldn't sit up without any support. Medical details, the use of the wheelchair and simple maintenance had to be explained through an interpreter. Groups from local churches would sing choruses and share the gospel.

In the Ukraine, many of the people we saw were war veterans who had had limbs amputated. They had crutches, but now in their 70s and 80s were unable to walk with them. I will never forget how many of them cried when we gave them a Bible in their own language and told them what we were doing was because God had told us to. One lady told us that now her husband had a wheelchair, she would send him out to look after the goat while she read the Bible!"

The mum-of-four originally grew up in Stubbington and went to Holy Rood Church. After starting work as an occupational therapist, she spent two and a half years in Chile with the South American Missionary Society (SAMS). She then met Peter within a week of returning home.

They lived in Dorchester, Cambridge, Ilford, Basingstoke, and Grays Thurrock before coming to the Isle of Wight. She grew up in Christian family and remembers making her own commitment of faith as a teenager on a CMS camp in the Channel Islands.

"I was listening to a talk there and it made sense," she said. "But working out my faith was a gradual process. Going to Chile had an enormous impact on my faith because it was practical action. I was working in a mission hospital with TB patients and in the children's clinics, as well as doing admin and driving the hospital ambulance.

"In this country we have so much that we don't need to ask God. Out there, if you were ill, that was it - they couldn't just take you to the doctor, you'd have to pray."

She is married to Peter, Vicar of St Paul's Church, Barton, and sees her primary role in church as supporting him to do his work effectively.

They talk about church life and have ideas together. But she's also involved in things that he isn't involved with - a ladies' fellowship, prayer meeting and Saturday morning Bible club for youngsters from a local estate.

Sue already has a group at Holy Rood, Stubbington, praying for their work as well as the congregation at St Paul's. Others who are interested in supporting the project through prayer or giving, donating or restoring wheelchairs or publicity can look at the charity’s website: http://www.throughtheroof.org

Reproduced courtesy of the Diocese of Portsmouth