FORT WAYNE, Ind. (BP) — When Katie met Kevan in 2018, his compassion charmed her.

“I’ll never forget how at one of the care center nursery rooms he asked the guys to take him out of the backpack and lay him next to one of the kiddos who was on the floor,” Katie, who worked at the care center in China, told Baptist Press. “Not everyone might notice this sweet child so I clearly remember it catching my attention and I completely melted. I knew Kevan was different than anyone I had met before.”

Yes, Kevan Chandler was in a backpack custom built to carry a 65-pound adult.

He was born with spinal muscular atrophy type 2, a disease that causes his spine to progressively degenerate as he ages. He was in his early 30s, weighed about 65 pounds, and was visiting the care center in China with a group of friends from the U.S.

His friends took turns carrying Kevan on their backs. Two years earlier, they’d hiked high points in Europe, taking turns carrying Kevan on their backs while climbing Skellig Michael rocky crag in Ireland.

What kind of friendship is required to carry someone on your back, up a mountain for 45 minutes at a time?

“I think a sacrificial love is representative of Philippians 2’s description of Jesus’ humility,” answers Ben Duvall, who carried Kevan in Europe and China too. “It’s one that looks at the needs of others as better than yourself and one that desires the good of others.”

Such love is fostered daily through “We Carry Kevan (WCK),” the ministry Kevan founded a year after the hike up Skellig Michael. WCK partnered with Deuter USA to design a backpack that can accommodate people with a range of disabilities, allowing them to experience life in ways not available to them in a wheelchair. The backpack is available for purchase at wecarrykevan.org.

Katie and Kevan are now married, and Kevan’s friends chaperoned him as he returned to China to court Katie, determined to keep their relationship pure.

“Over that whole year that we were dating and engaged, I had so many guys who were willing to travel with me and live with me and take care of me so that Katie and I could spend time together, but in a way that honored the Lord and was pure,” Kevan told Baptist Press, adding that such a courtship may not have been possible with hired caregivers. “Instead, these were friends with the same convictions, the same heart and serving the same Lord,” he said.

“I’m just thankful for these guys. I think that’s an example of not just caregiving, but actually stepping into life and conviction together that’s so important.”

WCK fosters within the disabled person the ability to trust, and within the caregiver the opportunity to love and care for another uniquely.

“The hard things become easier when the heart is to look after someone else’s good and to help share in their burdens,” Duvall said. “When this is at the heart of what we do, I believe it brings a unity to believers that is supernatural to anything this world can provide and draws eyes to Jesus in our support for one another.”

Such friendship and love were fostered in Kevan from his youth, having grown up in a home he described as having open doors. He and his older sister Connie were both born with spinal muscular atrophy type 2, but their parents were determined for them to live full lives in the Lord.

A large family of friends participated in their lives. Kevan’s father Peter, a mechanic whom Kevan said thought outside the box, modified Kevan’s wheelchair so he could play soccer as a child when they attended First Baptist Church of Welcome, N.C., an apparatus that suited him until third grade. He attended church, Sunday school, youth groups and summer camps.

His parents enlisted their friends in his care, and his friends naturally helped as they saw their parents help. (While Kevan’s parents are Peter and Diana Chandler, the family is unrelated to Baptist Press writer Diana Chandler.)

In high school, he and two friends played in a rock band together and took a road trip after graduation. They cared for him during the trip, seemingly a natural extension of their upbringing.

“I don’t even remember us having a conversation about it. We were just gone and we did it,” he said. “But it comes from those building blocks of a little bit here, a little bit there, and the next thing you know, your friends are helping to take care of you.

“And it wasn’t really until my 30s that I started to put words together about what I was doing, and I like to call it peer-to-peer caregiving, which is this idea that I’m inviting people into my need, but I’m also seeing that as an opportunity for me to care for them.”

As they help him shower or help him to the bathroom, that puts them in close proximity.

“Their full attention is on me and mine is on them,” he said, “and I can care for them by understanding them and listening to them and processing life with them. And I think there’s a great power in saying to someone, hey, I trust you enough to ask you to be a part of this and I think that’s a gift we can give to people.”

It’s the way Katie described Kevan upon seeing him for the first time.

“I noticed how he was so intentional to care for his friends and all of us around him,” she told Baptist Press. “He had this incredible and God-given ability to truly see people and to love them like Jesus loves people.”

The two live in Fort Wayne, Ind., where they both work from home. Kevan travels as a motivational speaker and has written the book, “We Carry Kevan,” on his adventures, including a children’s version.

He describes loving Katie sacrificially as one of his favorite things.

“It brings joy and fulfillment to me, because it’s what God’s called us to do in marriage, put the other before yourself. It’s easy to do not only because I’ve been told to do it by the Lord, but because Katie does it in return. I know that I don’t have to put myself first because she’s putting me first.”

(EDITOR’S NOTE — Diana Chandler is Baptist Press’ senior writer.)