Helotes UM Men help Mexican diabetics get around

Group has delivered
56 handcrank vehicles
across border since ’06
By Rachel L. Toalson
Staff Writer
Sid Martin spent many months trying to gain permission to deliver Personal Energy Transportation vehicles to Mexico, his home country.
Hundreds of Mexican diabetics could benefit from the hand-powered carts. That’s because diabetics were losing feet or legs because they couldn’t afford to change their diets.
A little more than a year ago, Martin’s dream was fulfilled.
He said he remembers clearly the day, June 18, 2006, when he and other volunteers from the PET shop at San Geronimo Airpark near Helotes took their first 20 devices across the border. There he met the nephew of a friend.
The United Methodists from Helotes weren’t supposed to beat the drums of religion, Martin said. They weren’t supposed to save souls.
But when his friend’s nephew, paralyzed from the waist down, asked them why the Texans had chosen to give him the gift of mobility, Martin said they had to answer, “God loves you, and so do we.”
“He got a little emotional,” Martin said.
Since that day, the San Antonio PET shop has delivered 40 more devices, and volunteers have helped set up Mexican PET shops in Nuevo Progreso, Tampico, Vera Cruz and Monterrey.
It all began at a United Methodist Men’s meeting at Helotes Hills UMC, Helotes.
In June 2005, Carl Taylor, a retired United Methodist pastor living in San Antonio, took Martin to Luling. That’s where a PET ministry had begun in 2003.
The Luling men gave Martin a videotape, and in August, he showed it to the United Methodist Men of Helotes Hills. Soon after, the men decided they wanted to start building PET vehicles, too.
“At that particular point in time, their charge was they didn’t care what I had to do or where I had to go, they wanted to start building,” Martin said. “We had no shop. We had nothing but a vision of ministry.”
Forty-five days later, a member of Helotes Hills approached the men’s group to say he had always wanted to build a shop. If the men would provide the labor, he would dedicate the space to the PET ministry. All agreed.
In about the seventh month of construction, Martin said the men realized the floor plan of the shop wouldn’t meet their needs as a PET ministry. Still, they worked another five months to finish the member’s shop, then began looking for another location.
They found an unused hangar in the San Geronimo Airpark at 15464 W. Farm-to-Market 471.
That structure works for the time being, Martin said.
The men’s group pays $200 a month to work there, said volunteer Dave Frazier.
The men started their ministry building parts for PETs and sending them to the Luling shop. Soon, they overwhelmed Luling with parts, Martin said.
Now the Helotes men build complete PETs and recently finished number 56, Frazier said.
Workers are not all United Methodists. Builders include Roman Catholics, Baptists and Lutherans. Many know each other from the Northside Lions Club. Others had never met before they started working together inside the hangar.
All barriers have been broken.
“This is something that’s really exciting,” said Chuck McCullough, who says he’s only “peripherally” involved in the shop. “It’s akin to where you find pockets of Muslim, Jewish and Protestant people who, despite theological differences, are getting together and doing Christlike things.
“There’s an incredible amount of self-emptying and giving that is going on in our backyard.”
Twenty PETs cost about $5,000 to make, Frazier said. Most of the material is donated, but some has to be purchased.
Each PET takes volunteers four to five hours to make, he added.
The shop operates on a $10,000-to-$15,000 budget every year, Frazier said. He has no idea how they make budget.
“God works in mysterious ways,” he said. “When we’re out of money and can’t buy new material, it just comes out of the woodwork.”
The Lions Club gives PET about $2,000 a year, Frazier said, and the Bluebirds volunteers at Methodist Hospital in San Antonio donated $2,500 this year.
Still, they “sure could use” more high-gloss paint, Frazier said—and another facility.
“We’ve got lots of inner-city (San Antonio) help,” he said, “but they’re not going to drive all the way out here.”
McCullough said all those who work in the shop are volunteers who want to make an eternal difference.

“There’s nothing selfish about this,” he said. “If people are hurting and hungry, it doesn’t matter how loud you preach or how orthodox your preaching is.
“If you feed the hungry and have a ministry that opens doors and minds, it doesn’t make any difference to them if you are agnostic or Jewish or Muslim or Christian. Jesus was all about ministry.”
Martin said those involved in the PET ministry are blessed as much as those who are receiving the PET vehicles.
“They tell me it’s scriptural, that if it’s truly a God thing, the recipient gets a blessing and the giver gets a blessing,” Martin said. “I could sit here for days and tell you just what’s happened in the last two and a half years because it’s truly made an impression here.
“Lives are changing in San Antonio.”
Martin still remembers chatting with Frazier when he first brought the PET video and his idea for a shop to Helotes Hills.
Frazier’s wife had had a bad stroke two years before, and Frazier told Martin, “Your God and I aren’t on speaking terms. I ain’t praying or singing songs or holding hands.”
Now when they finish loading up the PETs for delivery, it is Frazier who says, “OK. It’s time to pray.”
Stories like that, Martin said, make the hard labor in the heat of summer worth everything.