Missionaries & Windsor Company Help Haitian Man Get Back On His Feet
WINDSOR, Colo. (CBS4) – A Haitian man will be able to have freedom he hasn't experienced in a decade, thanks to a prosthetic company in Windsor. Quorum Prosthetics donated a prosthetic leg, valued between $50,000 and $70,000, to Gilbert Lindor years after his leg was amputated near his home in Haiti.
"In 2007, (Lindor) was out with a friend playing in the mountains and fell in a ravine," said Gary Fallesen, a missionary with Climbing for Christ. "His father picked him up, took him home, wrapped up his leg and left him."
"My family didn't have the means to help me or even to take me to a hospital," Lindor told CBS4's Dillon Thomas through a translator.
Lindor was only 11 years old at the time. He stayed for nearly a month in his home with the compound fracture, without medications or surgery to help.
"His father had dug his grave," Fallesen said.
Luckily, missionaries with Climbing for Christ happened to climb their way into Lindor's community. A teacher at the school told them their smartest student, Lindor, was stuck at home with a broken leg. Missionaries decided to evacuate Lindor, and took him to a hospital where his leg was amputated up to his hip.
In the years to follow, Lindor predominantly relied on a pair of crutches to get around his mountainous community. He grew in his studies and was able to attend medical school with ambitions of being either a surgeon or a gynecologist for his native people.
However, through schooling, he realized it would be difficult to serve as a surgeon while relying on crutches.
"It made it very difficult to perform stuff that medical school requires," said Brendan Tuchowski, an employee with Quorum.
Thanks to the missionaries who first saved him, Lindor was brought to Windsor, where Quorum Prosthetics built him a prosthetic leg.
"It took a lot of hours," Tuchowski said. "He will be better off walking with the prosthesis than without."
"I feel more comfortable. I feel good," Lindor said. "I'm thinking of using it adequately to keep working for God, and to continue my studies. I feel happy for getting the leg."
"Just to see the joy, that is all we really need to see," Fallesen said.
Those who helped make the donation happen said giving Lindor the prosthetic would in-turn help him save the lives of others. While the donation was expensive now, it would pay out even greater in the future with Lindor graduating medical school.
"Being able to give him a prosthesis to stand on frees up one hand to take notes," Tuchowski said. "If we can help him achieve his goals, he will help other people in the future."
"God has a plan for him. We are just one part of it, but it is a really cool part to be," Fallesen said.
