MARSHFIELD, Mo. -- Three months ago, doctors feared John Wesley Bryer would never recover from injuries he suffered in a car crash.  Now, after weeks of surgery and recovery, the 10-year-old boy is back enjoying time with family and friends.

  John Wesley's parents are thankful for a group of doctors and nurses at Cox South Hospital in Springfield, as well as a team of surgeons in St. Louis.  The family says all these specialists helped give the boy his life back.

  Ronda Bryer has a scrapbook she made for her son, John Wesley.  It contains the letters, drawings and prayers that the family received over the past three months.

  John Wesley doesn’t remember the accident.  On Nov. 20, he was on his way home from school, sitting in the backseat of the family car, behind his mother who was driving through an intersection.

  “A truck ran a stop sign, and the impact was on John Wesley's door,” said Ronda.

  An off-duty nurse from Cox came across the accident while driving her children home -- on a route she had never used.  Stacy Helton helped John Wesley at the scene and into a medical helicopter.

  The helicopter took John Wesley to Cox Medical Center, where doctors where able to stabilize him. After a week and a half of recovery, he was flown to St. Louis Children's Hospital, where surgeons began the task of reconstructing his face.

   “The front of his skull had no protection; I could put my finger right through and touch the brain,” said Dr. Albert Woo, a surgeon at Children’s Hospital.

  Woo, along with a neurosurgeon, performed a 12-hour surgery, correcting the fracture that ran from the top of John Wesley's forehead to his nose, including his eye socket.

  Doctors used a piece of skull recovered from the accident, and transplanted more bone from the back of John Wesley's head to complete his face.

  “Look at him!  He's beautiful,” said his mother.

  John Wesley said recently that he felt good.  Swelling around the new eye socket is still going down and doctors expect John Wesley to make a full recovery.

   Now it's back to being a 10-year-old, playing with friends and his twin brother, Ethan, who never left his side.

  “I'd stay at the hospital, do what I can with John,” said Ethan.

  Only a scar remains and John Wesley has a message for others who face similar challenges.

  “Be brave; get it over with; screaming won't help,” he said.

   John Wesley has had a tutor come to his home in the afternoons to give him his schoolwork.  Ronda says he's caught up on his class work.

  Everyone expects a full recovery, including John Wesley keeping the vision in his right eye. He still has some double vision as that eye adapts to its new location.

  Ronda says the young man who hit her car was found liable.  She laments that people just don't pay attention when they're driving, whether it's eating or talking on a cell phone.  She believes her son is here for a reason – to remind people to be more alert when driving.