Christian ministry launched in Auburn offers encouragement, support to amputees

Woody Thornton has two prosthetic legs — tiger-striped prosthetic legs. 
  
He’s a fun guy.
  
But he had a little too much fun on the night of Aug. 4, 1989. The last mile Thornton walked on his own two feet was down the lonely railroad track that runs parallel to Glenn Avenue near downtown Auburn.
  
He was stumbling home from a college party, drunk on beer and liquor. The train was rumbling down the track, and when it finally stopped, Thornton was left with a broken jaw, arm and collarbone and was missing everything once below his ankles. 
  
Years and several surgeries later, after God nudged him off a path of self-destruction, saved his soul and instilled within him a desire to serve others, he started CAST (Christian Amputee Support Team) Ministries to help others cope with life as an amputee spiritually as well as physically. 
  
“There are many amputee support groups out there, but I had not found one that was based upon Christian values,” said Thornton, a member of and Sunday School teacher at Providence Baptist Church, Opelika, in Tuskegee Lee Baptist Association.
  
CAST’s motto is Life Defined … Not Confined. According to Thornton, it is derived from 2 Corinthians 12:9–10, which Paul ends with, “For when I am weak, then I am strong.”
  
The ministry currently has two chapters — one in Auburn and the other in Mount Sterling, Ohio, which is headed by CAST co-founder and fellow amputee Gary Summers. Thornton and Summers met at the Ohio hospital where Thornton underwent a specialized operation to shorten his legs and thereby actually improve his mobility.
  
Through the two chapters, the ministry reaches amputees by visiting with them in homes, hospitals, detention centers and prosthetic offices and providing emotional and spiritual support, a wheelchair, a wheelchair ramp and opportunities for fellowship with other amputees. 
  
“We have planted and continue to water many seeds and have already had one [member] accept Christ as his Savior,” Thornton said.
  
CAST was incorporated in November 2006 and gained its tax-exempt 501(c)(3) nonprofit status from the Internal Revenue Service in May of this year. Its first support group meeting was held in Auburn in March, and the group continues to meet about once per quarter. 
  
Mac Nelson, a member of Parkway Baptist Church, Auburn, in Tuskegee Lee Association, serves with CAST in the capacity of trainer, which he defines as “a [CAST] amputee whose function is to visit other amputees to provide information and encouragement.” 
  
His left leg was amputated below the knee in 1967, the result of an injury sustained after stepping on an explosive device while serving in Vietnam. 
  
“I see our most important mission being to new amputees,” Nelson said. “There are bound to be lots of questions. ‘How long before I heal?’ ‘How difficult is it to learn to use a prosthesis?’ ‘How often does the prosthesis have to be replaced?’ ‘Can you swim with it?’ ‘Can you bowl with it?’ Many of these questions can be answered by their prosthetist, but I think it helps to have someone who has dealt with these questions personally to reinforce what they have been told.”
  
Whatever doubts there may have been pertaining to fishing with a prosthesis were laid to rest by CAST members at a catfish pond in Opelika Sept. 29 at a group fishing get-together and fish fry. 
  
More than 60 people were in attendance; 11 were amputees. 
  
“Everything we do, we try to include friends and family,” Thornton said.
  
He said he wants nothing more from his efforts with CAST than for amputees to be blessed with firsthand knowledge that life minus a limb can be as abundant as Christ ever intended it. 
  
For more information on CAST, visit www.castministries.org.