Johnathan shared this life event with me and I wanted to help with his out of pocket medical expenses. Would love your participation. As you may know Jonathan resigned from Acxiom years ago to work at Gospel for Asia where he raises funds to sponsor his work there. As one of many that supporters for Jonathan and his family I wanted to reach with a special request to help fund these additional unexpected expenses. Thanks for your contribution.

Sincerely

Brady

Hello All,

I know I just sent out a newsletter, but events of the last week warrant a special edition via email.

 

When I asked you in our latest newsletter to pray for our family camping trip, I had no idea how important those prayers would be. The first several days of the trip couldn't have gone better--beautiful scenery, great family time, fun hikes. 

Tuesday we were in a remote location in northern Arkansas, and I was taking the girls rock climbing. I won't go into the details, but essentially I made a mistake, followed by an unexpected fall, and the result was that I fell about 20-25 feet and landed on a boulder. We had all the safety gear in place (helmets, ropes, harnesses) but just as with our super-safe cars these days, doing the wrong thing at the wrong time can still lead to disaster. Anyway, after I fell there followed a lot of drama involving being carried out by search and rescue and flown to Little Rock for what everyone thought could be fractured vertebrae and possibly pelvis, in addition to some obvious breakage in the foot/ankle that I landed on first. By God's abundant grace and miraculous protection, it turns out that the only serious injury (aside from a lot of very impressive bruising) is a shattered heel bone on one foot. Praise God! As you might imagine it was pretty traumatic for everyone, but Erica and the girls handled it beautifully and God provided all that was needed to get me out of there safely. To give you some idea of how difficult that was: it took 2 EMT’s, 8 or 10 search and rescue workers with a fancy one-wheeled stretcher board, two forestry service rangers, a specially equipped offroad vehicle—and 3 hours—to get me out of the woods and to the nearest field where a helicopter could land. Pretty humbling to be the cause of so much trouble for so many people, but I sure am grateful for them all.

 

God continued to provide even after they flew me out in a helicopter. One of the search and rescue guys helped Erica and the girls get our camper out of the very remote location I had gotten it into, and even put them up for the night in his family’s air-b&b. We were able to salvage the latter half of the trip for the girls, as it was a big extended family and friends campout from Thursday-Sunday, so they went to that with my family members while Erica and I stayed here in Little Rock at my parents' house. 

 

I spent the next few days after they released me from the hospital early Wednesday morning, trying to keep the swelling down and pain under control, and to find an Orthopedic surgeon in Texas for the surgery that is needed to put my heel back together. Again, God provided abundantly through a recommendation from an anesthesiologist cousin of mine for a top-notch orthopedic surgeon who specializes in foot and ankle reconstruction. Miraculously, the surgeon made room for me in his calendar the day after I got back to Texas (that appointment was this morning). Now I have surgery on my foot scheduled for Wednesday (10/25). Since the fall, and for the next 2 or 3 weeks, I have to spend most of my time flat on my back with my foot above my heart. Indications are that recovery from this kind of injury will be about 6 months with lots of formal and informal physical therapy work to regain function. 

 

God has been so gracious through all of this, so present with all of us through some pretty scary events, and I have so much for which to be thankful. At the same time, I've spent quite a bit of my time lying on my back wondering and praying about what God is doing here. I mean, the accident was my own fault, but God permitted (and greatly limited) the consequences. I know He has good purposes in this, I am just not certain yet what they are. That leads to some specific prayer requests and some more general ones:

Please pray for the surgery Wednesday and the near-term recovery from surgery to go smoothly.

Please pray for patience and grace to continue as much of my ministry work as possible while stuck on my back for the next few weeks.

Please pray for long term recovery and regaining full foot and ankle function.

Pray that I will know how to cooperate with God’s purposes and those purposes will be fulfilled in all of this.

Pray that the entire family knows how to cooperate with the Lord as he walks with each of us during this time.

 

And whenever you pray for these things, please also praise God for His incredible protection and provision thus far. I am so thankful for each of you who pray for us, and this whole episode has only emphasized for me how important that prayer is.

 

Blessings,

Jonathan

 

P.S. I included a picture of the rock face that was my undoing, of me being carried out, and of my flat-on-my-back workstation.