Prayer is often better than a fast food restaurant. Especially when you live in rural Mexico and need a new prosthetic leg.

I'm sure he has a real official-sounding title, but Jim Lanning will always be known to me as the "Miracle Guy" for ADRA, the international Adventist Development and Relief Agency. If you need 20 tons of milk, call Jim. If your x-ray machine blows a fuzola, call Jim. If you'd like to donate 10,000 pairs of eyeglasses, call Jim and he'll get them to 10,000 pairs of eyes that need to see. Jim's e-mail address should be changed to impossibilitiesfulfilled@prayerneverstops.com.

"My e-mail is an adventure every day," says Jim, "So I read it first thing every morning. I never know what I'll find."

Like the morning he opened the mail from an unknown address. The message said something like, "Needed: one left leg."

The note was from a missionary family in Mexico, in a village far from medical care and, especially, far from a source of prosthetic limbs. It told the story of a young woman who had been in an accident and lost her left leg. It was a long story, filled with details that called forth the Kleenex from Jim's top drawer. "It's hard to believe that some lives can even find room for so much sadness!"

Jim didn't know the family, and he noticed they had sent the e-mail to a dozen other aid organizations. "Should throw it away," he thought. Then he called a doctor at Johns Hopkins, and three other medical friends to see how to go about finding a leg. "Left leg."

No luck.

Then Jim's assistant walked in with a blanket-wrapped package. "An older couple just brought this to the security desk upstairs and said to give it to Jim Lanning. Want to see what it is?"

They unwrapped the blanket and stared at a prosthetic leg. Left leg.

Jim sent the e-mail back with a question. "I have your leg," he wrote. "How can I best get it to you?"

A message quickly came back. "I see you are in Maryland. Are you anywhere near Gaithersburg, Maryland? We have a missionary friend who lives there and who is coming to Mexico tomorrow. Maybe he could bring the leg."

Ninety minutes later, the Gaithersburg missionary was in Jim's office to collect the leg. Twenty-four hours later, a physician in Mexico was measuring the woman for her new leg.

"Before you call," God's promise reads, "I will answer. While you are still speaking, I will hear" Isaiah 65:24.

Left leg. God's leg. Delivered by Jim.

Dick Duerksen is the director of mission development for Florida Hospital in Orlando.