CHAPTER 21

Randy’s Skill

God restores what He creates.

On the other side of the world, a man walked into the emergency room

of a hospital in Los Angeles. He had been involved in a horrible accident
in his woodshop. His right hand had been completely severed, and he was
carrying it in his left hand. Calls were immediately made to get one of the
few surgeons who would be able to deal with such a massive and complex
injury. It would be hero’s work, even for the world’s best surgeons.
Randy arrived, scrubbed in, and began what would be an eighteen-
hour surgery. With scores of labeled hemostats, he identified and
numbered each of the hundreds of tendons, veins, arteries, and muscles
on both sides of the injury. One by one, he reconnected them. Never
flinching. Never losing concentration. He did the painstaking, nearly
impossible work of reconnecting this man’s hand to his body again. I saw
a video of Randy a few months later shaking hands with this carpenter
who had regained full use of his hand. Only a handful of the best surgeons
in the world could have done this operation. Randy was one of them.
Randy loves airplanes. There aren’t many he hasn’t flown. He was
learning how to fly a DeHavilland Beaver seaplane near Seattle. The
person teaching him took him in the off-season over the border to
Canada, far up an inlet. Unbeknownst to me, they landed at my lodge and
walked around a little. While they were exploring, the instructor, who is a
friend of mine, told Randy about a little boy in Uganda who had suffered
a massive injury with a machete. He learned about a witch doctor who
had committed a crime, a guilty verdict, and a little boy who was horribly