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Category: Resource Room

Edith Guffey Affirms Importance of UCC Disabilities Ministries

Edith Guffey, Associate General Minister

I think my first real, up-dose experience and exposure to the reality of life for persons with disabilities was in my friendship with Valerie Russell. During the years that Valerie served as the Executive Director of the Office for Church and Society, we became good friends. Following her stroke, when she allowed me, I took her shopping, to dinner, or to other events and places. I began for the first time to really understand how much the world is designed for those who don’t regularly face the additional challenges of walking, opening doors, getting out of cars … and the list goes on and on.

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One Week in a Wheelchair – Donna Schaper

Editor’s note: The following article by Rev. Donna Schaper, Association Minister, Massachusetts Conference, originally appeared in Colleague, September, 1999.

I took an unexpected class trip last month when I pulled a tendon playing tennis. I found myself at a national convention of my church for a full week rooming with and in a wheelchair. When the tendon insisted that I couldn’t walk, I couldn’t imagine not going to the Synod, and I couldn’t imagine going. Thus the compromise of the wheelchair and the non-stop joke from old, good friends about how “long they had wanted to push me around.”

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