Trial By Fire: Mike Skupin's Journey
MIKE SKUPIN: It is incredible, because the whole show is a study in human behavior. When you are not eating and drinking and sleeping and exposed to the elements, people's true characters really come out. The first few days, they try to hide who they are, but eventually their true character comes out. It is an interesting experience compounded with the fact that you are all trying to win this game. It is an incredible adventure.
RYAN: Having evaluated all three Survivor series they have done now, our favorite is Survivor: The Australian Outback, because it was so amazing how God was represented. There were some obvious Christians in there who were open with their faith. Do you see that as significant in the episode that you were in?
SKUPIN: The reason I think it was so significant is because, on the first show, they had probably about 15 million viewers a week, and on the second show, they had about 35 million a week. All of a sudden, all of the backstabbing and things that happened on Survivor 1 were not happening on Survivor 2. All of a sudden [there was] handholding, group prayer three or four or five times on the show, and Tina saying, 'Thank you, God.'
RYAN: I was amazed that they aired it, because it was obviously edited. I thought, there has to be a significant amount of spirituality there in order for them to air that and for it to make the cut, so to speak, because a lot of times secular television cuts those things out.
SKUPIN: Right. On the first show, a guy brought a Bible, and Hollywood edited it in a negative way. The Bible was brought on the second show, too, and it became almost a focal point of our camp. God got in the hearts of the editors and the producers and owners and CBS who put all this stuff on the air.
RYAN: The last episode they were back to backbiting. We were not sure if there was a Christian among them, because it got pretty bad. You, of course, are so familiar to people because of the episode where you fell into the fire, and people remembered the scenes of you in the river and the skin just peeling off. Tell me about what happened with that and then the healing that you experienced afterward.
SKUPIN: I passed out into the fire and inhaled a big, thick cloud of smoke and was burned very severely. Thirty percent of my hands had third-degree burns. My hands swelled up to about four times their normal size. It was really a painful experience. I saw five burn surgeons and I ended up in the intensive care ward of the number-one burn center in Australia. They said I had to have a series of three skin-grafting operations.
Survivor had sent a woman to stay with me 24 hours a day to take care of anything the hospital wasn't going to take care of. She was a very spiritual woman. She took the miraculous things that happened to me in the outback and we prayed for an hour, two hours, three hours every day for the healing of my hands.
RYAN: How did they determine who was sent to you?
SKUPIN: Coincidence.
RYAN: I find it amazing that they sent an incredible Christian.
SKUPIN: It is amazing. I owe this woman -- her name is Roz -- I owe her my faith, because at a time when I was bitter because I was not in the game anymore and I was a little bit angry, she helped me turn it all around. Ten days later, on the day I was supposed to go in for my first skin graft surgery, the doctor took the bandages off of my hands and said, 'What has happened to your hands is medically unexplainable. In thirty-five years, I have never seen anything like it.' They said I would have scarred hands and lack of range of motion, but my hands healed up totally.
RYAN: That has been the story that has gone beyond the story of Survivor and has given you entry into so many opportunities to speak to congregations and kids and youth. What are you doing now? Where has the Lord taken you? You became an instant celebrity.
SKUPIN: It's interesting, because I started speaking as a hobby. Churches would bring me in and youth groups would bring me in, and the schedule kept getting bigger and bigger. Finally, one day I looked at my office assistant and said, 'Let's do the ministry full time.' I quit my jobs and sold my business, and I have been doing the ministry full time for eight months. I've been speaking all over the world to churches and youth groups and ministries like Acquire the Fire. These people, out of the Blue, were calling me for things. I have never felt more blessed in my life than when God has had a chance to use me.
RYAN: And that was really an answer to a prayer you had. You had a successful business, but you had a prayer, 'God use me.' Did you ever dream He would use you in the way that He has?
SKUPIN: It's funny, because people say, 'Survivor? How could He use Survivor?' But God will use anything. It was the number-one television show ever in the history of television, and it changed my life. I have spoken to 100 million people through TV and radio and live experiences, and my story carries on. It is amazing that God uses that even today, a year after the show was on the air.
RYAN: You also survived with your family. We were shocked when we got the phone call that you and your family had been in a plane accident. What happened?
SKUPIN: I was at a political rally, and while I was speaking, God said, 'Share the Gospel with these people.' I said, 'No way!' I fought God for fifteen minutes. Finally I said, 'All right' and I shared the Gospel with these people. You could have heard a pin drop in the place. The governor was there, the secretary of state was there, and the Supreme Court justice was in this place, and it wasn't a forum to share the Gospel. Two hundred people came up to me afterwards. It was just incredible.
Half an hour later, we lost both engines on the plane. We were 6,000 feet in the air. The plane crashed into a pile of rocks, shattered into a thousand pieces, flipped and turned and threw my wife
RYAN: You landed partly in Lake Michigan, right?
SKUPIN: Right. My wife and four-year-old were in the back seat. Fifteen seconds before the plane crashed, my four-year-old got out of her seat belt and jumped into my wife's lap. All my wife could do was hang on to her. Somehow my daughter ended up without a scratch on her, and the seat she was sitting in was completely crushed.
First of all, I should have never survived that plane crash, because I was sitting in the cockpit and the cockpit was totally destroyed. My wife was five months pregnant. We are due any day now for that baby. I want the baby's middle name to be 'Miracle,' because she has really survived a bunch. It's amazing. God is capable of anything, and the miracles that God does today are just as big as the miracles He did way back in the Old Testament.
RYAN: What a testimony that through Christ, we are all survivors. Thanks so much for being with us today. God bless you, Mike.
