John Bartel was a healthy, athletic, twenty-year-old young man who was gradually taking full charge of the family dairy farm with all its multiple duties.

It was a beautiful spring day in the lusciously green Fraser Valley, British Columbia. The grass was just right for filling the huge silos for winter feed. John was busily unloading the heavy fodder into the silage cutter and blower when a large bunch momentarily stopped the conveyer belt. By sheer habit, John stepped on the guilty bunch to get it moving again while his eyes selected the next place to insert his pitchfork, when he felt a tug on his right leg and he watched in horror as his foot and then his leg were shredded and sent up into the silo.

When he finally extracted himself, all he had left was a three-inch stub. Praying earnestly all the while, he undid his pant belt and used it as tourniquet to stop the profuse bleeding. Painfully, he dragged himself into the milk parlor of the dairy and called for an ambulance.

A few days after the operation and cleanup, he sat in his wheelchair in the hospital sun room, feeling sorry for himself and wishing himself dead rather than handicapped for the rest of his life. He noticed another wheelchair enter the room. A middle-aged man sat there with a blanket around him and looked at John with some disdain and said, "Young man, shame on you whining away like that here. You should be thankful that you are alive and healthy!" John replied a bit tersely, "You don't understand .... My leg is gone forever!" "Well, then, look at this," replied the man as he threw off the blanket and revealed two stubs about as long as John's. He then continued, “Young man, get well; then go out there and prove to the world that you can do as much with one leg as anyone else who has his two legs."

John went back to the farm and after a number of fittings, had a mechanical leg and foot made to suit his needs. He milks up to seventy cows at a time for his livelihood. He has taken over full possession of the family farm. John swims and water-skis (he always slaloms), he was featured in a sports magazine a few years ago as an ardent downhill skier. John Bartel married my niece. When I officiated at the wedding, I suggested they could remain standing for the prayer of blessing, but John said, "No way, I can kneel down and get up like everyone else on my own when the prayer is over."

They have a fine family of three children. John takes the oldest boy, no weight, to the top of the five thousand foot Mount Cheam as they both ride their trail motor bikes along that mountain trail. John and his wife Margaret were the youth leaders in their church for a number of years. He is now about thirty-three and has proven that he can do everything with only one leg and more than others can do with two, at least nearly everything ... he can’t stand only on his mechanical leg. He has a good sense of humor and a living, practical faith in the determination to succeed. And he is successful in so many ways and an encouragement and example to everyone. John would say, "I can do all things through Christ, which strengthens me."