One mid-November day, Dale Boe's arms started tingling.

"My arms feel funny," the Belle Fourche man told his wife, Sandi. "They feel like they're going to sleep."

The 62-year-old missionary was in Chile at the time, building an orphanage in the Andes through Vocations for Orphans, the nonprofit organization he and his wife founded in 2000.

By the end of the day, Dale was paralyzed.

Dale was diagnosed with Guillain-Barre syndrome, a rare autoimmune disorder in which the body's immune system attacks the peripheral nervous system.

He has been making slow progress at a hospital in Oklahoma City, where he has been for the past month. He can shrug his shoulders and will soon breathe on his own, but the road ahead is long. Recovery could take years.

"He's always worked really, really hard. He's very determined," Sandi Boe said. "If anyone is going to make it back, working through the physical therapy, it will be him.

"Plus he has a goal: We have to get this orphanage done."

For the past four years, the Boes have been building the orphanage in Chile, and when the project is complete, the complex will have eight family-based units, Sandi said.

The first buildings are already going up, and Dale typically spent nine to 10 months a year at the orphanage site, sometimes alone, sometimes hosting volunteers.

Vocations for Orphans, which is based in Belle Fourche, has been working since 2000 to establish similar vocational training and building projects at orphanages worldwide.

Volunteers have traveled to Brazil, Mexico, Nepal and South Africa, and places closer to home including Wichita and the Cheyenne River Indian Reservation, according to the group's Web site.

"If kids can have a glimpse of who God intends them to be, then they can live up to the potential he has given them," Sandi Boe said.

The Boes are deeply religious, and Sandi Boe said she i's thankful she was in Chile when her husband fell ill. Many times, he was alone on the mountain and wouldn't come into town for three or four days at a time.

"It was the difference between life and death," Sandi Boe said. "You already see the hand of God there."

Before being medically evacuated to Oklahoma City, Dale Boe spent a week and a half in a hospital in Coquimbo, a city about two hours from the orphanage site.

When Dale arrived at St. Anthony hospital in Oklahoma City, he was paralyzed from the neck down and breathing with the help of a ventilator.

Robert Rader, director of hospitalists at St. Anthony, said the hospital sees about half a dozen cases of Guillain-Barre every year. Dale has one of the most severe types.

"It's a 50-50 chance of recovery," Rader said. "It's impossible to predict who will recover and who won't."

Each nerve has a myelin sheath around it, much like an electric wire has insulation, Rader said. In Guillain-Barre patients, antibodies are triggered that attack the sheath, interrupting the transmission of nerve signals.

Doctors think Boe's case was triggered by a bout of gastroenteritis, Rader said.

The main treatment is supportive, keeping patients breathing and nourished, Rader said.

Boe also has received plasmapheresis and intravenous immunoglobulin therapy, both of which try to remove the antibodies from the body.

Dale has been improving, but Rader said it isn't as good a response as they want. He is able to initiate breaths on his own and will have a voice after doctors remove the ventilator, but motor function in his arms and legs has not improved.

"It's going to be slow and gradual," Rader said. "We have seen some improvement. How far that improvement will go is just impossible to predict."

In the coming days, Sandi Boe and their three children will move Dale closer to home to a long-term acute care facility in Billings.

As for the orphanage, Sandi Boe said work will continue. One of their daughters is taking a building team down at the end of January.

Through everything, it's Sandi's faith that has given her strength, she said.

"To know that ultimately God can bring good out of this, we just rest in this," she said.

For more information or to leave messages for the Boes, go to www.caringbridge.org/visit/daleboe.

About Guillain-Barre syndrome

Symptoms include weakness, tingling sensation and paralysis.

The exact cause is unknown, but symptoms often manifest themselves a few days or weeks after an immunization or certain types of infection. Guillain-Barre is not contagious.

Guillain-Barre affects about one person in 100,000. Most patients fully recover.

Sources: National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, Robert Rader