Dear amazing Ezer Mizion family!
I’ll never forget that moment. I was in the middle of an important call with a serious client. Dozens of calls from a number I didn’t recognize kept interrupting with annoying beeps. Finally, I had no choice but to apologize and take the other call. In the background, I could hear sirens and shouts. My son’s friend screamed into the receiver, “Yoni was hurt in an accident and they’re taking him to Hadassah!”
I ran down six floors on foot, stopped a taxi and zoomed to Hadassah Hospital. I got there together with the ambulance. Yoni was wheeled directly into the operating room, with serious injuries to his extremities, damage to internal organs, and hemorrhaging in his brain. The doctors didn’t give him a chance. I summoned my wife and the whole family. We stood for hours next to the operating room, praying and organizing prayers for his recovery. And then you came, with hot food and kind, encouraging words. That was our first encounter, and since then, we’ve been meeting every day.
Two months of prayer and nine operations are behind us; sixty days during which we sat in shifts at his bedside, hoping for a miracle. Our home was on the verge of crumbling. I’d hardly stepped foot in my workplace. My wife had barely stepped foot at home. The other kids were miserable. And then, against all odds, Yoni woke up. It took a few more difficult weeks full of medication until we got to rehab. Thank G-d, now we have been there for five months, in a process of treatments and therapies to restore Yoni’s walking ability and movement in his hands.
We owe Yoni’s progress to your ambulance network and the devoted volunteers who escort us to treatments, provide hot meals, treats and trips for the kids, relieve us for a few hours, and help Yoni with his difficult and painful exercises. I cannot imagine what would have happened without your amazing service, given free of charge. I couldn’t possibly have financed an ambulance trip back and forth three times a week, and without that — what would have been with Yoni’s legs?
Meanwhile, we put aside ten shekels for each trip we took with you (during such difficult times, even such a minor amount is not easy to come by) and the sum came to 1,200 shekels (attached), which means that we went on 216 trips in your ambulances!
I am deeply moved just thinking of how much you saved us during those difficult days. Tizku l’mitzvos! May you merit more mitzvos!
With appreciation and admiration,
E. Stern and the whole family
