After tragic crash, God tells Pilot 3 words...

i've always dreamed of flying and when i rededicated my life to lord of 16 i felt the call to missions and and it was a number of years of preparation before we got there and so it was just a really um really amazing to then be able to serve directly on the field uh of reaching these tribal people for the lord their language has never been spoken outside of the of the tribe and so they don't have never had access to the gospel the aircraft is their only link to the outside world and so it's um it's just really neat to be a part of what you guys did to move there is amazing and you know you were only there for seven months john finally living the dream you'd had since you were 15 years old seven months into the time you had a terrible accident tell me about that day yeah well um myself and the other pilots all rode motorcycles in the little three kilometer drive between the airstrip and the uh and the mission center he lived on and i had just completed a full day of flying i actually had passed an important check ride in my training and uh as i was driving home i was coming around a blind curve and there was a drunk driver on my side of the road uh we had a head-on collision and um and so and it's uh severed an artery below my knee and my leg got pinned between the motorcycle and the and the land cruiser and uh and so and the lord just um you know he allowed this accident to happen but he miraculously saved my life through many miracles that happened that night you know the first one being that um it's it's not cultural for papua new guineans to stop and help accident victims it's just not not part of their culture but there was a local pastor who um who was riding along in a public motor vehicle and it was empty and he convinced the driver saying hey we need to stop and help because at the end of the day there's other people coming from the hangar but they're all on motorcycles too they wouldn't have been able to to help me and i'm and i'm i've severed an artery i'm bleeding to death and so within minutes of the accident they've had me in the back of that van and had me at the missions medical clinic and so they could get a tourniquet and stuff applied and um and then you know this is a small medical clinic it's it's not a it's not a hospital or anything and and the fact that the main doctor that was there she was she's she's a pediatrician by by her her trade she's not a trauma doctor and so and she had never seen an injury as extensive as the one that i had i just shattered my leg below the knee and um and i my hemoglobin was down to like 2.7 you know and the doctors were convinced i was going to die that night they told 80 that i was either going to lose my leg lose my life and i was probably going to lose my life wow and uh and then um they had never done a blood transfusion at this clinic before and they couldn't determine a blood type on me i didn't have enough blood for them to even determine what my blood type was and and she couldn't remember what it was and i was in no condition to tell and but there was a nurse or a lab tech who had a dream previous that there was a mass trauma and they did not know who the universal donors were and they and it was it was tragic so she woke up from the dream and went and registered all the universal blood donors on center and so she had that list ready and she was able to get them and the first three people she called came right away because i i needed blood badly i was i was i was literally dying and um then there was they needed blood bags for them to donate blood into they don't stock those there they're not they're not set up for this there was a man who had a blood condition that um years previous who needed his blood drain into a blood bag for some sort of testing i'm not sure what it was but they found three blood bags left over from that and were able to administer three units of blood to me which got me you know um survived until i got was able to get to australia now the the airstrip we flew out of you can't fly at night yeah you had to wait till the next morning and so yeah because i wasn't stable yes and so by the time i got to australia it's a four-hour flight to get there i had a tourniquet on for 17 hours and they tried to save the leg but it just wasn't wasn't gonna um survive and so they they had to amputate you guys went through such a long road to recovery what was this like for you seeing this happen to you here you are giving up everything to serve god and then this terrible thing happens only seven months in how did you process that well there's the shock factor that happens i was in uh almost a surreal shock you know feeling when i first when it all was happening and then as soon as we were medevac to australia we were surrounded by missionaries left and right or people that supported missionaries and just came and encouraged us loved on us made meals for us i just felt an overwhelming peace from the lord that he had this covered and i remember posting on facebook we started posting right away on facebook messages just to let out the news to our family of what was going on and i remember the lord just telling me i've got this this is from me and my post said god's got his leg and when i john kind of came to after having surgeries and blood donations i just said how you doing honey and he goes the lord knows it is what it is and i have i don't know why but i have an overwhelming peace you know from god that this is from him and we're supposed to glorify him i've known him since i was 11 and he was 13 and he's always been determined and let's adapt and then overcome that's always been his personality with the lord guiding him but it's no surprise to me that he's come this far you're a fighter and you know you woke up with that incredible piece but then you had a seven month long recovery of all kinds of setbacks to the point now you've had this leg for just what three months three months prosthetic leg so tell me about the process of processing this with god in your faith oh yeah and like i said i woke up with overwhelming sense of peace but you know there still is the realities then of hey this is completely you know changed my life and stuff and so there there was you know there and the process of seven months without being able to walk because the tourniquet did damage um high up on my thigh and they amputated a little bit below the tourniquet line and so i ended up with muscle tissue that ended up basically dying and it took five months for that process to go through and so i i knew i couldn't get a leg until my my prosthetic leg until my my my stump healed and it just wasn't healing and so that was that was a very difficult time of and my wife is really the the hero in the story in that she had to pick up all of the slack because i was i was pretty doped up you know so even i wasn't necessarily mentally there for probably about four months five months of that time because i was on all kinds of different pain meds and and drugs and stuff and which i'm completely off of now which is wonderful yeah you're walking great i've seen you watch yeah and so and she had to pick up the slack of you know basically being a single parent then and you know she had to load my wheelchair whenever we went anywhere and doing doing everything and so she is really in many ways has been more difficult for her than it has been for me although i'm living with disabilities she had to pick up all the pieces yeah and so it um better for worse sickness and health right but you know the lord works through adversity that's where he can shine and you know the the sense i have from the holy spirit saying you know just just glorify me is what uh is what the lord was telling me and realized that it when we respond in a way that is peculiar to the world and that we should be angry we should be you know mad at god and and depressed and we didn't have any of that because we put our trust in the lord and said you know this is what what we um we trust in him and he's gonna carry us through he has his purposes on this and that's that speaks volumes and we overwhelm the post department at the hospital with people sending in cards and letters and they're saying you know who is this guy you know what's what's going on and we need to tell them we're missionaries and we have all the support around the world and you know this is why we are um um responding this way because we have the power of the lord in us and so we were able to witness in a way that we never could have before and so it's been a a need to be able to because it's not about us i mean if it was left to us we'd be a mess it's the power of the lord working through us and we just get the privilege of being a vessel to uh to channel the the power of the lord through you

Channel: 100huntley

Views: 676,702

Keywords: 100Huntley, Crossroads, Christians, Jesus, Christian Testimony, Christian Testimonies 2021, amputation recovery, Ethnos360, Jon and Adie, Jon and Adie Leedahl, Jon Leedahl, Jon Leedahl NTM, Jon Leedahl Papua New Guinea, Kodiak, missionary aviation, missionary aviation PNG, missionary pilot, New Tribes Mission, New Tribes Mission Aviation, NTMA, Papua New Guinea, prosthetic, missionary, missionary bush pilot, amputee, amputee story, christian missionaries, my testimony, jesus testimony

Id: YtJ5gu1Ryks

Length: 8min 47sec (527 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 04 2021