Mission of Love helps answer couple’s prayers

Photo by: William D. Lewis

Photo

The Rev. Gerardo Hernandez, a visiting priest to St. Rosa de Lima Church in Campbell, prays with paraplegic Felix Rivera and his wife, Lourdes, in their home. Mission of Love is helping to build an addition to their house.

Photo by: William D. Lewis

Photo

Construction workers, who did not wish to be identified, added trim to the door frames in the new addition. Mission of Love paid for the materials and labor.

By Kristine Gill

kgill@vindy.com

YOUNGSTOWN

Felix Rivera lay in bed as a priest recited the communion rite in the cramped, makeshift bedroom of his East Side home.

Rivera, 71, has been in bed since a golf-cart accident left him paralyzed in 2005. He cannot walk. He can barely move his arms. His hands are forever balled into weak fists that rest on top of his blankets.

“Sometimes I think I can work,” said the former GM employee who retired in 2001. “Late at night, I remember I can do nothing.”

On Wednesday, Felix and his wife, Lourdes, 64, received communion amid the buzz of a power saw. A few paces from their bedroom, past piles of bedding and neglected chores, a crew worked to finish an addition to their home.

The Mission of Love, a nonprofit based in Youngstown, raised money to pay for the labor and supplies needed for Felix’s new bedroom, which will include a handicapped-accessible shower. Lourdes usually fetches water from the basement to bathe her husband in bed.

Her caregiver responsibilities fell to one of her daughters recently when Lourdes spent two weeks in the hospital after a heart attack. She points to the scar along the right side of her neck where doctors cleared a blocked artery.

“Welcome to the house of the cripples,” Lourdes said, laughing as a family friend, Phil Gonzalez, translated.

The Riveras originally are from Puerto Rico, and Gonzalez met them 30 years ago through their church, St. Rosa de Lima on Tenney Avenue in Campbell. Gonzalez asked Kathy Price, founder and director of Mission of Love, for a vehicle to help transport Felix to doctor’s appointments.

But after meeting with the Riveras and presenting them with a free van, Price knew her work wasn’t done.

“I looked around and said, ‘We need to do something,’” Price said.

A Cleveland company donated the wheelchair ramp that leads from the Riveras’ front door, and Price raised funds through the mission to pay for the addition to the home.

“I feel happy,” Felix said. “I have to wait and see when I move in there. It’s like living another life.”

Gonzalez said the accident five years ago did have some positive impact on Felix, who used to drink and smoke. When asked how he dealt with the shock of learning he was paralyzed, Felix shrugged and smiled.

“This is God telling him that part of his life is over with,” Gonzalez said. “This got him away from that vice. He’s accepting things as they are.”

Felix’s daughter, Monica, was learning to drive the golf cart in the backyard of their Early Road home when she hit the wrong pedal and the cart lurched forward, hit a rock and tipped, pinning Felix beneath it.

She was a teenager at that time, but Monica also had suffered burns on most of her body as a child when she threw a bad report card into the fireplace.

“Somehow that stirred the fire out of control,” Gonzalez said.

Price is working to fund reconstructive surgeries for Monica through the mission.

“There are so many things going on,” Gonzalez said of the family’s woes.

In 2004, one of their sons, a cab driver, was assaulted by a passenger. When he drew his own weapon to defend himself, the man turned the gun on the Riveras’ son. He nearly died from the bullet that entered above his left shoulder and is still lodged there.

Mission of Love, which began in 1989, has an international focus and does not primarily aid area residents.

“Most people in our area are so blessed, and the needs in our area are nowhere near the needs of the indigenous,” Price said. “Felix is within our reach, and that’s the bottom line.”

Many of the group’s missions have led to an American Indian reservation in South Dakota where volunteers from across the country have met to build homes for the people there.

A group visited the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in September, and in August, volunteers and area surgeons traveled to Guatemala to perform cleft-palate surgeries on 18 children.

The group is sending a package to Honduras today that includes 32,000 pounds of medical supplies, school supplies, weaving looms, Christmas gifts and corn donated from a local farmer.

The package will be airlifted via the Denton Program, in which the Department of Defense transports donated cargo to those in need using military transportation.

In the meantime, humor and religion sustain Felix and Lourdes, who have been married for 44 years.

Just Wednesday, Lourdes jokingly complained to her husband, begging him to get out of bed to help her clean the house.

“He said to her, ‘How can a dead man help one who is dying?’” Gonzalez said.

But when jokes don’t cut it, the Riveras turn to a higher power.

“God first,” Lourdes said, pointing a finger toward her bedroom ceiling.

“Jesus.”