“My mother and father taught me to count my blessings, to focus on the things I had, not those I didn’t have. After feeling sorry for myself for years, I finally learned to count.”                        Nick Vujicic

1997 – Melbourne, Australia: At 16, Nick Vujicic listened to his father, a pastor, tell a story about Jesus healing a blind man. When the disciples asked Jesus if the man was blind because of his or his parents’ sins, he responded, “This happened so the power of God could be seen in him.” After a decade of pleading with God for a miracle, Nick decided that if he couldn’t get a miracle, he would become one.

A short time later, the high school janitor stopped Nick in his wheelchair in the hallway and encouraged him, “Nick, you are going to be a speaker one day. You have a story to tell. You are going to tell your story to people worldwide.” And he did.

Nick was born to Serbian immigrant parents in Melbourne in 1982. His father came to Australia to start a church; his mother was a delivery room nurse. When Nick was born with no arms, no right leg, and a tiny flipper with two toes in place of a left leg, his mother would not allow the nurses to bring the baby to her room for two days. The baffled doctors diagnosed the baby’s condition as Tetra-Amelia Syndrome, a rare birth occurrence only found in a handful of cases worldwide.

The Vujicics adamantly refused to let Nick become a victim of his circumstances. They took him to church every Sunday, encouraged him to do his best, and let God take care of the rest. They taught him that he had a choice. He could focus on the things he didn’t have, or he could focus on and be thankful for what he did. He could choose to give up or decide to keep going.

Nick’s challenges increased when he became his school’s first special needs child. He was ridiculed, laughed at, and bullied unmercifully by his classmates. The boys liked to joke that they could use him as second base. He was tired of the bullying and convinced that he would always be a burden to his parents. At age 10, his mother caught him trying to drown himself in the bathtub. His growing faith helped get him through the difficult years that followed.

 After high school, Nick became an ordained minister. He enrolled at Griffith University in Queensland, Australia, and three years later, he earned a double major in accounting and financial planning and decided to go all in on public speaking. More than 50 schools and civic organizations turned down his offer to give an inspirational talk. A guy with no arms or legs was not their picture of inspiration nor success. On Nick’s 53^rd try, he landed an opportunity to speak to a high school two hours away. Ten students attended.

On the drive home, Nick decided public speaking was not for him. But the following morning, he got a call from a local high school and two weeks later he spoke to 500 students. Speaking requests began to flow in. In 2005, Nick founded Life Without Limbs, a Ministry of Hope. Two years later, he moved the ministry to California.

Today, 42-year-old Nick Vujicic is married and the father of four. He has spoken to an estimated 750 million people in more than 80 countries and turns down 25,000 speaking requests annually. More than one billion people have watched his inspirational social media posts and read his books about his journey to faith, hope, and perseverance. The evangelist, best-selling author, musician, and actor enjoys skydiving, swimming, surfing, and fishing.

“Storms don’t last,” Nick often tells audiences. “You can get through whatever you are going through. There is always hope. Look what God did with me. He used a guy with no arms and legs as his hands and feet. God can use your broken pieces, too.”