"For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven"
- Ecclesiastes 3:1
It’s that time of year!
Fall is the time of year that Prosthetic Promises founder and board president, John Brinkley, and board member, Greg Burris, make their annual trek to Kansas with a U-Haul to load a shipping container with donations we have received and supplies. The shipping container will make its way to Zambia via the Houston port to South Africa.
If you have items to donate, we would love to receive those by mid-October to be sorted and packed.
· Shoes (sizes 8-11 men's & women's)
· Crutches
· Walkers
· Wheelchairs
· Eyeglasses or readers
· Socks
· Drawstring bags or tote bags
Time to grow.
Prosthetic Promises has made 13 trips to Zambia since 2012. During that time, we have seen the number of patients each trip grow steadily. In May 2025, we were not able to provide a prosthesis for all of the patients who came, due to time and material constraints. We obtained contact information from these people to see them next year, and we now have a list of patients that is too many for our capacity to take care of in April 2026.
We have been working on establishing a partnership agreement with another charity facility in Zambia where we will provide prosthetic components and a fee per patient, and they can provide prosthetic care for patients who apply for our assistance without charging the patient. The barrier patients have is the cost for care at this facility and sometimes the lack of materials this facility has access to in order to provide a prosthesis for patients, so by establishing this partnership, we can help more patients receive the care they need. As of publishing this newsletter, we are at the final stages of working out this agreement and the logistics of how patients will be referred to their facility.
This expansion of our ability to help patients is another step in the direction of sustainable prosthetic care in Zambia, which has been a PPIHN focus from the beginning. This expansion also means that we will need to expand our administrative work and fundraising efforts. Katie is now dedicating more time to Prosthetic Promises as a contract Executive Director to expand the organization and work to coordinate patients in Zambia to receive care throughout the year, in addition to Prosthetic Promises’ continued yearly trips.
We would greatly appreciate your prayers for Prosthetic Promises as we expand with this initiative!
Want to get involved?
We have numerous ways YOU can be part of the work that Prosthetic Promises does. It takes us all to make a difference!
With our plans for expanding our ability to help patients in need, we will need more prosthetic supplies and funds to make it happen. If you work in the O&P field or have connections with someone who can donate used prostheses, please let us know. Do you have ideas on how we can expand our reach? We’d love to chat and tap into the creative ideas out there on how to better help people in need of prosthetic and ocular prosthetic care in Zambia.
Our immediate ways to help right now are helping us gather donations for the shipping container, and if you are in the Temple, TX area, volunteering to help sort and pack donations with John before November. Let us know if you can help!
Prayer requests...
· Thank you for your prayers for our 2025 trip and the 85 patients we were able to see in May. Please continue to pray for the patients we see in Zambia and the people we work with at New Day Orphanage.
· We ask that you pray for our organization as we move forward in growth. We continue to seek guidance and wisdom in the decisions we make for PPIHN.