First Person with Wayne Shepherd

First Person: Alice Teisan

Alice Teisan was an avid bicyclist when she was diagnosed with Chronic Fatigue Immune Dysfunction Syndrome (CFIDS) Send your support for FIRST PERSON to the Far East Broadcasting Company: FEBC National Processing Center Far East Broadcasting Company P.O. Box 6020 Albert Lea, MN 56007 Please mention FIRST PERSON when you give. Thank you!

Duration:: 23m
Broadcast on:: 10 Dec 2010
Audio Format:: other

Alice Teisan was an avid bicyclist when she was diagnosed with Chronic Fatigue Immune Dysfunction Syndrome (CFIDS)

Send your support for FIRST PERSON to the Far East Broadcasting Company:
FEBC National Processing Center
Far East Broadcasting Company
P.O. Box 6020
Albert Lea, MN 56007

Please mention FIRST PERSON when you give. Thank you!

Well, I think the bottom line for me is I have learned that when God asks us to do something, that He wants us to obey Him. God wants to use our weaknesses and it's in our weaknesses that He is strong. I'm Wayne Shepherd, welcome to First Person, where we choose to talk with a guest each week to learn their story of God's calling and provision in their life. Today we'll meet a woman who could have let a medical condition dictate life to her, but instead chose to believe 2 Corinthians 12-9, which says that my grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness. We'll hear Alice Teason's story today. First Person is a weekly program and you'll find more information about today's guest online at firstpersoninterview.com. Also on the website is a link to His Wheels International, which is the organization Alice founded in spite of her disability. We'll also play some photos on our Facebook page. I learned about Alice in this unique ministry from a mutual friend who pointed me right across town a few blocks from my own studio, where Alice and her team repair and assemble bikes and trikes. As we stood there on the assembly line, I began by asking her about the medical diagnosis that threatened to change her life. Now chronic fatigue syndrome, the title, makes you think that it's just that you're chronically tired, but in 1992 it was also known as yuppy flu. Chronic fatigue syndrome has not gotten a good title to it, because over 50% of people go in to the doctor complaining of chronic fatigue, but chronic fatigue syndrome is a invisible disability that affects every body system. I've seen over 19 specialists from 19 different areas of medicine. It has totally ransacked my life, but the word syndrome in the medical world means that we don't really know what it is. We don't know what causes it. For me what happened was when I was 30, I was four days from going on a thousand mile bicycle trip and I woke up and went to get ready for work. And three hours later I crawled out of the bathroom, unable to stand. I slithered to the phone and I called my boss and I said, "I won't be in for work today." What I didn't know then was that was the last day I would ever return to full-time work. Could it come on that suddenly? It might have come on earlier. I was a nurse at the time. It might have come on, but it was such flooky symptoms that you just thought, "I just need to go home and go to bed." My face would turn red from the part of the neck you can see up until the top of my head and I didn't know why my heart was a cardiac rehab nurse and my heart was doing funky things but I had no idea what was going on. I could never find it and yet I could read EKGs. So it just has affected every area of the body. One physician who works in infectious disease works with Cefid's patients and AIDS patients, his name is Dr. Mark Loveless, and in the '90s he said a Cefid's patient feels significantly the same as an AIDS patient feels two months every day as an AIDS patient feels two months before death. Cefid's is the acronym for? The acronym actually for Chronic Fatigue Immune Dysfunction Syndrome. Cefid's or CFS is Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. They're all, or Epstein-Barr, Yuppie Flu, all in the same category and nobody knows what causes it. You were a very active person. You said you were about to leave on a thousand mile bike trek when this happened to you? Yes, as a matter of fact, it was going to be a two and a half week interview and I was going to go from there, I was going to go and work with the organization I had done all my cycling with as a child and wandering wheels and lead cross country bicycle trips. So four days before when this hit, I was devastated. I woke up and I thought, "Okay, I can't make it today," and every day I'd call the team and I'd say, "I'm going to try and make it tomorrow," because it seemed like the flu. I had a low grade temperature, I had what you would call a bad flu type of pain throughout my body, whenever I'd stand up, the room would spin on me. I couldn't be out of bed for more than an hour or two and I just figured, "Hey, this flu is going to end in 24 hours." You're a nurse. You know it's going to run its course, right? Yeah, I didn't think I was going to run this long of a course. Well, physically of course, it affected tremendously, emotionally harder to affect you. Well certainly, the word "yuppy" flew in and of itself a couple weeks prior to hearing that I thought, "Wow, the yuppies even have their own flu." So you know, speaking of something that's derogatory, when I got the diagnosis, I felt like the physician had read me my life sentence and thrown away the key. I mean, I was devastated. I knew that medicine didn't have any answer, I was single, I live alone, I wondered where my next dime would come from, I wondered when I would be homeless, it left me, just totally a mess. You were unable to hold down a job. Right, right. Matter of fact, since 1992, well, in my whole adult life, I have only worked four years full time in my life and I'm nearing the mid-mark. Well, we're talking to you because even though you still live with C-fids, you have taken on a responsibility that's just incredible. When did the turn come about? We're going to talk about his wheels international, but when did this turn come about for you? When did you realize I need to do something? Well, you know, it's interesting that this thing of I need to do something, I had been doing something all along, prayer had become my number one occupation back in 1988. And when C-fids hit 92, I said to God, I'm going to start praying an hour a day. So between 1992 and 2003, I prayed an hour a day, and then at some point I ramped it up to two hours a day. And so it was in the backdrop of my number one profession becoming prayer, instead of productivity, that God had a plan and his next step in his plan was that in 2003, in the height of the deepest despair I could be in, I had disability insurance. And one day I got a notice that said your disability benefits have been terminated. That was early 2003, and that was 24 years earlier than what those benefits were guaranteed to me to. And since you weren't independently wealthy. Yeah, and I knew that I didn't have anybody I knew that was about to give me a nice inheritance. I was spooked, I buy statistical purposes, I should be homeless on the street due to my medical condition. So you lose your disability income, how does God provide? Well, that's a very good question, matter of fact, I was at church one day, and a woman said to me in the very awkward way of wanting to care about me, she says, how are you doing? I said, well, I have a roof over my head, I have food in the fridge, I'm debt free, I have money in the bank, how does it sound? She said, wow, you're doing better than most. But I went home and I thought, you know God, how have you provided? So I kept what I called a God come list, you know there's income, and then I called it God come. And what I did with my God come list was I decided everything I got for free, I would write the thing down, and then I would give just a low ball number to it. So shortly thereafter I went into a doctor's office and I came out and I said, hey, are there any free samples and she said, oh boy, I'm really sorry, there aren't any samples for the medication you need. And I turned around and the secretary said, well, if you would just sign on this line, the drug rep is here to give you all those medications. So then I went to another, so that was God come. That was God come, and it was a big God come. Then I went to a chiropractor, and the chiropractor, I had helped him with some financial issues just counseling him one time. And I went to pay the bill and the woman said, oh, it says no charge. And so, and then at that time in 2003, there were a lot of houses in my neighborhood that were being torn down because of bigger houses being put up. And I called an owner and I said, hey, you got a lot of nice plants in this yard, can I take them? Oh, sure. So I was able to give those to my friends. So that was God come too, and that I was not having to pay for gifts. And they had a sink, and I needed that. And so God provided in a six month period over close to $11,000 in God come income. It was more than what I would have made in my disability insurance. It kind of showed me yet again that my God is the one who owns the cattle on a thousand hills. Coming up in a moment, we'll walk around the shop at his wheels, talk more with Alice, and meet some of the volunteers. My guest next week will be a man who witnessed the revolution in Romania. 1989 in December of that year was the Romanian Revolution. And yeah, we were on the streets I got for the first time in my life. I got the machine gone, you know, in my hand, and people were fighting on the streets and just an experience of life and death. Now more than 20 years later, he serves as the pastor of a growing church in Romania, a life transformed by Christ. We'll meet Christian Barboso next week on First Person. Let's go back into the busy workplace at his wheels international. We'll meet some of the volunteers in a moment, but I ask Alice Tissen to describe the work that they do in this shop. Well, we're at his wheels headquarters, and we've just been here since May of 2000, of this year, and we do a lot of things here. We work on bikes weekly. We have mechanics days where we have children all the way up to. We have multi generations that work with us fixing bikes. And so we have guys who come and repair bags for our national side of our ministry, which is recycling cycles. So you rebuild them, or in some cases, you actually construct new bikes and new tracks, right? Well, we don't construct new bikes, but we do have a section in our headquarters where we have designed and built a hand-pedaled three-wheeler. We affectionately call it trike, and that is for those in other countries who've been hit by landmines, polio, and other disabilities. And as, unfortunately, we claim that in the 20th century, one of the most deadliest things that came in that era were the landmines. So let's talk about the recipients, people who have perhaps lost their legs or have some other form of disability. In the case of this trike, it makes it possible for them to get around. Do you provide that to them at no cost? How does that work? Well, we're just at the beginning of that. Since we've started the trike project, we've distributed 52 trikes of ours in some way. But we do not want to just give something to someone, because we believe that dignity means that we give and receive from each other. But in America, we think about dignity in the form of dollar bills. Overseas, they don't have dollar bills, and we're serving, as Scripture says, the least of these my brothers with the trikes. So we are asking those who we partner with to ask for something in return for the trike. For instance, we just got a trike to a teacher in Angola who became paralyzed at the age of seven with polio. She crawled from her village to school, once a week from where she lived, and then every day had to crawl to class. And the trike now will let her take her off the ground, off of crawling like an animal, and it will allow her mobility and dignity, because now she can look in your eyes and not look to the ground like an animal. How do you distribute them? Do you go yourself? Do others go? Do you just put them in a box and send them off? How does that work? Well, we're in the process of many different things. In 2008, between 2008 and 2010, we had a gentleman who built 20 locally in North Africa. And just in January, they distributed the last 13 of those 20 trikes to people that were identified by physical therapists. In May, we sent 15 trike kits. That means just the trike parts that are all bent. And we sent them in a container box, on a container, to Soto Christian Hospital in Ethiopia. What they will do is hopefully they will have a vocational rehab on the grounds where they will weld them and paint them. And that saves us about $500 a bike, but it also gives them something to contribute. And the surgeon will decide who receives them after this orthopedic surgeon does surgery on it. What a tremendous thing. And we'll put some pictures on our website so listeners can actually see these trikes and these bicycles that are being built here. Now we walked into this place. It got kind of quiet. It got half a dozen volunteers working around here. I think they're intimidated by the microphone. We need to have a silent, silently effect on these guys. But here's a gentleman. Tell me your name, sir. Everett Peterson. Everett, you're working on a child's bike here. You're obviously refurbishing this? Well, just try to check it out and see what needs to be done to make it usable. How long do you think, how much time do you spend on getting this bike ready to go out? This way maybe an hour. That's it. And then it's all ready to go out. It'll be used by a child somewhere. Right, Alice? Right. Our local program we have served, we have distributed so far over 1,300 bikes. Those have gone to immigrants, refugees, international students. Part of Angel Tree Project. A church in Bronson, Michigan took about 20 or no 100 and they then partnered with the school district. Let's go over to one of these trikes. It's unimaginable if we were to lose our legs how we'd get around and yet this provides a way for someone. This is an amazing piece of machinery here we're looking at. Yeah, it is. In 2005, three months after we started his wheels, we decided to, I was at a meeting with an Ethiopian government official who said we need trikes throughout Africa. I was going to go take a welding class. Yeah, let's get the designer over here. He's a little mic shy, but don't worry. We're friendly. Tell me your name. My name is Kevin Nicklitch. And Kevin, you actually helped design this trike, huh? Yeah, actually, yeah, like Alice said back in 2005, we ran into each other at a small event and she showed me a picture of what she was wanting to do and to my mind, being a person that likes things as simple as I can get them, it looked a little complicated. So I said, let's take about a week or so and see if we can redesign it so it's easier to build and here we are, how many years later, I don't know, but still doing the same thing. So Alice, how much does it cost to build one of these? Well, for the trike kit, which is prior to the welding and the painting, the kit cost about $275. That's it? Yes. I'm a bit surprised by that, I would have thought looking at all the work that goes into this and all the parts and the design and the labor that goes into it, it costs a lot more than that. Well, the labor that you're paying for is the bending of the tubes, but Kevin took our original trike from about 50 welds to, I think this has about 20 welds, right, Kevin? Yeah, 20 or so, about half as many as whatever it was to start with, yeah, we simplified it a lot. You have to make it very sturdy. Yeah, that is one of the primary requirements is to make something that can be pretty well beat upon. Because once you put it out there, it's probably not a whole lot of people who can fix it afterwards or other. Yeah, well, that's what we're afraid of, isn't that? In some cases, even though there's a lot of welders in Africa, you know, will they be in the right place at the right time and usually you're by yourself if you're out there puddling, so yeah, you don't want it to break on you? I know you're doing this and you're going about your work here and I'm interrupting your work today. It's just deep inside, why are you doing this, Kevin? Well, what I always like to tell Alice is it's because I felt sorry for when I looked at how complicated it was for her to try and do something like that. But the other half of the truth though is that in reality, it's kind of nice to be able to do something that you do out in the commercial world, but to have perhaps more of a lasting point to what you're doing. And so it's one thing to design something to make a bunch of money and we all would like to do that. On the other hand, it's kind of nice to be able to use your skills to help other people in a way that goes beyond that money. Well, thanks for what you're doing. I'll let you get back to work and the others are working away here too. So you both refurbish bikes and custom make these trikes that go out. Tell me some more of the reaction and some of those God stories that you were telling earlier. Well, over here at the end, we have one of those God stories in Tom. And in 2005, I had started the program and I was having a Sabbath rest and I had closed my computer and the phone and the door and I get this knock on my door. And it's a guy who had a $7,000, $8,000 racing bike and he's coming up and asking me about the trash in front of my house. Now Tom's here. I would ask him the rest of the story. All right. Well, should we go over and talk to Tom about it? Yes. All right. Let's walk across the shop here. I'm Tom. Right. Is this Tom? I'm Tom. All right. Tell us the rest of the story. Well, I have a house of 11 children that live next door to me and people give them bicycles all the time and most of the bicycles that they are given should have been thrown in the trash. So I've decided that I needed to repair their bike so that they would be safe on the road. I also race bicycles. So that gets expensive to have those fixed all the time. You know, I took a class and learned bike mechanics and she had all this really glorious junk on her parkway that would help some of the bikes that I was going to repair for my neighbors and walked in and told her and if it asked her if it was trash and could I have it and she gave me a look like, "I don't bother me." And we stood and talked for a few minutes and found out that I had recently retired and was looking for something to do was a bicycle mechanic, which is something she needed. And shortly thereafter, I was in my truck having only met me like 10, 15 minutes earlier and we're going to pick up bikes from the bike shop. Best friends forever, huh? All right, thanks, Tom. Thanks so much. Thanks for what you're doing here. Alice, what's the bottom line of all this for you? Well, I think the bottom line for me is I have learned that when God asks us to do something that he wants us to obey him. Now this, when I was 15, my brother told me he was going to buy me a bike shop when he got, became a millionaire and a few weeks ago, I asked him, "How did he do?" And he said, "Wow, I couldn't have thought of something this big." Or could I have? But God wants to use our weaknesses and it's in our weaknesses that he is strong because what's going on here is way beyond me. I could have never built a trike even though I thought I was going to go take a welding class, but it was the dream. It was the passion I had that Kevin responded to. It was the passion I had that Tom responded to. And Tom has said this has given us life purpose and Kevin, who built the trike, said, "I found what I was created to do." It's a great team led by a woman, Alice Tiesen, who followed God's call in spite of her disability. You want to visit the website for his wheels international so to make it as easy as possible to find, just visit firstpersoninterview.com where you'll find the link. Again, that's firstpersoninterview.com. And by the way, we'll post some photos I took that day with Alice and her team on our Facebook page. Just search for a first person with Wayne Shepard when you go to Facebook. Also on the website firstpersoninterview.com, you'll find an archive of past programs, so if you've missed any of our broadcasts, you'll find them online at firstpersoninterview.com. Next week, I want you to meet a friend who serves as a pastor in Romania. Before the revolution, Christian Barbosa was persecuted for his faith. After the revolution, God's using him to build his church in Romania. You'll get the whole story next week on First Person. Now with thanks to my friend and producer Joe Carlson, I'm Wayne Shepard. Join us next week for First Person. [MUSIC PLAYING] (gentle music)