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Watch Lesa's story here.

Lesa Frantz picks up the phone expecting nothing new. It's been that kind of season, quiet, alone, waiting on surgeries she can't afford to recover from. It's someone from GiveSendGo's Hope Team, calling to pray with her.

"It was a very important phone call for me," she said, "because it was like God heard me. He heard me. And in that call for prayer, it was him saying: I see you, and I hear you."
 

A Fall She Never Fully Recovered From

Lesa is 64, living alone on Social Security. In February 2022, a fall damaged her hip, her hand, and her shoulder, the same shoulder she'd already had two prior surgeries on. Four years later, she's still paying for it. Her wrist has been through four failed surgeries, and her bones simply won't heal around it. Her hand is painfully deformed. Her thumb won't bend. Several fingers can't fully extend. By the end of last year, her surgeon had a plan: a fifth attempt at the wrist, a shoulder rebuild that might turn into a full replacement once he was able to see the damage firsthand, and two knee replacements. Four surgeries in one year, starting January 22nd.

"This is a lot for one year," she wrote on the fundraiser she started that December, "but I must improve the quality of my life that I've endured since falling."
 

The Cost of Recovery

Lesa didn't ask for much, and what she asked for was specific. A toilet riser and rails. A knee slide exerciser. An ankle rest for sleeping. A slide sheet, so she could get in and out of cars and beds without help. An adaptive equipment kit, a shoe horn, a reacher, a dressing aid, since her hand still won't fully close around ordinary things. A used electric recliner, because her couch sat lower than her surgeon said was safe, and pushing herself up out of it with one working hand would be nearly impossible.

All of it came to $500.

"I have no friends or family to help me,” she wrote, “I have been a shut-in since all this began." She'd found exactly one person willing to get her to her first surgery and bring her home. After that, she was on her own.
 

Not a Single Prayer

For months, her fundraiser sat there. Nobody gave. Nobody prayed.

"I felt like God didn't see me anymore," Lesa said. "I didn't get a single prayer or donation to my fundraiser. That was pretty hard on me, at a time when I was already feeling unseen." She didn't take the page down, not out of hope, she was honest about that too. "I didn't cancel my fundraiser because I simply didn't think about it."

A Prayer Partner on GiveSendGo’s Hope Team named Louise would eventually leave this on her page: "Father, I ask that you guide Lesa through her recovery from surgery. Remove any fear and bring strength and healing. Draw her near and cover her with your peace." But that came later. For a long stretch, there was nothing there at all.
 

The Hope Team’s Prayer Call

GiveSendGo’s Hope Team is something no other crowdfunding platform has: a department dedicated to calling and praying for every fundraiser that comes through the platform. Lesa's call came a few weeks after she launched hers that December, but it didn't stay routine for long.

Once the team heard what Lesa was facing, four surgeries in one year, no family nearby, a $500 need that had sat untouched for months, they decided hers was exactly the kind of need the Outrageous Generosity Initiative exists for.

The team had planned to give her $250. By the time the gift landed, it had become $500, matching her goal exactly, with this note left alongside it: "From the GiveSendGo Hope Team through our Outrageous Generosity initiative — may these funds be a blessing to you and bring encouragement, provision, and hope in this season. You are seen, cared for, and lifted up in prayer. Shine brightly." 
 

Beyond the Goal

They didn't stop at the goal.

The team placed an Amazon order for her equipment directly, so Lesa wouldn't have to shop and carry boxes with one working hand. That freed up her $500 for something else entirely, a pair of glasses, to replace the ones she'd lost off the roof of her car three months earlier, and enough groceries to prep and freeze meals ahead of surgery, since cooking one-handed is its own is a challenge. 

"I want to say thank you, GiveSendGo," Lesa said. "I am so thankful. I have my equipment, and you went even beyond that."
 

Just Like Daniel

A few days later, Lesa wrote to the team again, this time about something more than her physical needs.

"Honestly, I haven't understood God's purpose in such a long season of struggles that seem never ending," she wrote. "That's why the timing of your help, coming out of the blue at such a time, has an impact that goes far deeper than the financial help. It showed me that God is with me in my lowest and hears my prayers since I first spoke them, just as He did with Daniel."

Lesa's fundraiser never went viral. It sat quiet for months, started by a woman with no one left to ask. Then an ordinary prayer call turned into an extraordinary one. GiveSendGo loves being generous, and in this case that meant stepping in directly.

Money met a genuine need for Lesa. But what she needed even more than the equipment was what the call gave her first: hope, the kind that comes from being prayed for, encouraged, and shown up for by people who didn't have to. 

There's probably a Lesa in your life right now, someone quietly carrying more than they've told anyone, with no one they think to ask. Don't let them go unseen. Start a fundraiser for them, tell their story, and be the person who steps in. It might be exactly what turns their silence into a story like hers. 

You can also watch Lesa's full story here.