This piece is heavily sourced in Brett Madron’s interview of Gregg Garner, in 2012, as well as firsthand accounts by Skylar Aaseby and Cameron Kagay, who were present for the events.
The summer of 2011 was set to be a full summer of service. Gregg would lead his seventh summer Internship program, and his itinerary included a series of concerts in Uganda with UnNamed Servant, a 100-person youth conference in Kenya, and work with student interns in India.
On July 7th of that summer, UnNamed Servant played an unforgettable concert in Kampala’s Alley Gators music venue. Ministry contacts and cooperatives from the village had come to see the band live and were the happiest crowd you could imagine. After the concert, tragedy struck.
On the way back to the hotel from the concert venue, their 15-passenger taxi got a flat tire. Thankfully, the driver had a spare tire, but it was going to take several of the men to replace the tire. Several bandmates and team members got out of the vehicle to hoist up the van and get the spare in place. Skylar Aaseby, Cameron Kagay, Seth Davis, Adam Loeffler, and Gregg were nearest to the road, and Paul Olson was on the opposite side of the vehicle.
With their backs to the street, and Gregg on the very end of the vehicle, they were hit by a safari-style SUV traveling at least 50 miles per hour. Gregg, bearing the biggest force of the impact, was thrown nearly 30 feet. The other men were sideswiped and also knocked to the ground. As they came to and began to collect themselves in the darkness, they all remember Gregg’s words: “Jesus. Oh, Jesus. Jesus.” And then, “I have a hole in my side and I’m bleeding. Guys, you have to get me out of the road. I need you to lift me. I can’t move. Get me out of the road.”
His voice got their attention. Skylar stopped traffic coming near them and found among the stopped cars a vehicle to take them to the hospital. The others moved Gregg out of the middle of the road. His leg was mangled, and his side was bleeding profusely. Gregg was laid on the bench seat of a van. Skylar kneeled by his side and applied pressure, but the bleeding would not stop. He wept, “Lord, this is not the way this ends. You have to save him, Lord.”
They had to get to the hospital, but the driver of the van that they were now in turned out to be drunk and didn’t know any English. In the confusion, Gregg asked the men around him, “Someone call my wife.” He told Tara there had been an accident, and calmly, so as not to make her afraid, alerted her to the severity of the situation.
They arrived at the first hospital and found workers laying tile in the lobby. The hospital was closed. “Go to the next one! Kampala International!” Gregg instructed. The second hospital was open and received him. Gregg had frequented hospitals in East Africa on several occasions, but never as a patient. Ugandan hospitals lack staff, equipment, and resources, and are less likely to take drastic life-saving measures.
As the doctor examined him, Gregg struggled to keep awake. He kept praying to God for strength, reminding himself to hold it together “for my family, for my community.”
The doctor explained that Gregg’s wounds would require a specialist surgeon to stop the bleeding, but the surgeon wouldn’t arrive for the next 6 hours. Gregg asked her if she thought he’d make it. “I don’t think so,” she told him.
He grabbed the doctor and said “Please, call the surgeon, tell him to come now. Tell him my situation, tell him I’m dying here. He has to come; it’s his job to save lives. I’m not done yet.” The friends that were with him began to cry, and Gregg remembers thinking, “God I need your help. I gotta live.”
The surgeon arrived 30 minutes later. He called for an emergency exploratory surgery and a blood transfusion. Gregg and the team knew that a blood transfusion could be a death sentence in an unsterile environment. In fact, the team knew a little boy who had died just one month before from a blood transfusion. Gregg refused the transfusion, but they kept telling him he would die without one. As they put him under, he sternly warned the surgeon that God was watching them and they didn’t have consent to amputate or do a blood transfusion.
After surgery Gregg was given the equivalent of two aspirin to manage the pain. His friends helped him go to the bathroom, asked the nurses and doctors relevant questions, and advocated for proper care. As he lay there, Gregg looked around the hospital and saw so many others who lacked the care he received from his friends. The moment inspired him to help produce doctors to help in hospitals like that one. But also, noticing all the good his friends were able to do for him, he became determined to help more people become like them: patient advocates, men and women who were knowledgeable of medical services and could offer both guidance and therapeutic care.
After a little over a week in the hospital, Gregg was able to negotiate his release to fly back home to Nashville, by taking 5 steps (due to not having imaging equipment, the hospital couldn’t have known Gregg’s leg was completely disconnected at the knee). Gregg had a long road of recovery before him - 8 subsequent surgeries. It would be a mental and spiritual struggle as well. Having invested himself in the people of Africa since the late nineties, Gregg felt “rejected, this country that I had given myself to, to help, to invite other people to .. it just tried to kill me.”
Gregg remained on bed rest for almost two months. He continued to thank God for the health of his mind. Although he had fractured his temporal and parietal bones during the impact, he held onto all the abilities that made him such a dynamic teacher. Since he couldn’t move, he was determined to use his mind to serve his wife, kids, and community. Students had come to Nashville to learn the Bible from him, and he wasn’t going to let them down. As he said it, “As soon as I could almost get into a wheelchair, I rolled over to orientation and I was able to teach.”
He also used his “downtime” to create several businesses. Members of the organization got involved in these businesses, giving them an opportunity to develop skills, find meaningful employment, and help create revenue for the organization’s work around the world.
Back in 2012, Gregg wrote, “In the end, my hope is in the Lord, not in whether or not I’m going to be fully restored.” Gregg received a “restart on life.” He said that as he laid on the hospital bed in Uganda with the possibility of dying, and throughout his recovery in Nashville, he thought to himself, “Everyone is going to make it, our movement is going to go forward the way it needs to.”
Gregg taught a full load of Institute classes in the 2011-2012 academic year, laid out on a recliner then from his wheelchair. In December of 2012, soon after he was able to walk again, and after his 7th surgery, he returned to Uganda with his friends by his side.
Read Gregg’s full interview here.