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Kansas farmer lets stranger hunt on his land, gets a kidney

Gil Alexander (left) and Rob Robinson

Gil Alexander is very thankful he welcomed Rob Robinson onto his property six years ago.

Their chance meeting saved Alexander's life.

In 2008, Robinson knocked on Alexander's door, introducing himself as a hunter from Mississippi hoping to shoot pheasants on Robinson's northwest Kansas property. Alexander said yes.

Three years later, Robinson returned to hunt turkey.

This time, the men started talking — and Alexander mentioned that he was in need of a kidney transplant.

When Robinson returned home after the hunt, he got tested.

"He texted me and said, 'I'm a match,'" Alexander, 56, told the Associated Press. "I put down the phone and started to cry."

"I never thought I would be an organ donor, let alone a living one," 45-year-old Robinson said, adding that it just felt like the right thing to do.

On Nov. 25, 2012, the men went to a Kansas City Chiefs football game together. The next day, they went to the hospital for surgery.

The transplant surgery was successful.

In the operating room, doctors discovered that Alexander was in the early stages of pancreatic cancer — and were successfully able to remove the cancer.

"I just feel like the most blessed person on the planet," said Alexander.

Since the surgery, Alexander has been able to stop dialysis and continue farming his nearly 3,000 acres of land.

"What I found out is that little decisions can impact your life greatly. It's like my sister moving to Kansas 20 years ago. Me deciding to pick-up turkey hunting. If I had never killed that turkey, I had never knocked on his door," Robinson told WIBW.

The two men, now good friends, have since launched Forever Outdoors, a nonprofit that brings wounded veterans, children and others to northwest Kansas to experience hunting and the great outdoors. They hope to eventually create a "five-star resort" where veterans and donor recipients could come and hunt and enjoy nature, regardless of physical or financial obstacles.

"I also want to turn my house in Mississippi into a lodge," Robinson added.

He told WIBW, "I want God's light to shine through me. Anything I can do or say to help someone...and I guess I have always been that way or thought that way, but this kind of put an emphasis or a exclamation point behind it. It's all about sharing the blessing."