LUMBER BRIDGE — Nate Forbis plays sports and video games, likes to be outdoors and to ride roller coasters. He’s learning cursive in his first grade class at Greenville Christian Academy, and wants to be a farmer like his dad but is a mama’s boy.

He’s 6 years old — a “normal little boy,” says his mother, Keshia; “a ball of fire,” says his father, Henry.

But he was born with one kidney, and now that lone organ is failing.

Alan Brunnet has been friends with the Forbis family for almost two decades. Brunnet and his wife of “26 wonderful years” live in a remodeled, 100-year-old farmhouse in Lumber Bridge, just down the road from Henry. They attend the same church, and Brunnet’s youngest son works on the Forbis farm.

Brunnet, 50, is the proud father of two sons: a 24-year-old who is a lieutenant in the Army, and a 20-year-old who attends Wilkes Community College.

He plans to give Forbis one of his kidneys.

On Nov. 10, a week after Forbis’ 7th birthday, one of Brunnet’s healthy kidneys will replace the boy’s failing one, which went from operating at 15 percent capacity to 9 percent because of chronic renal kidney failure.

“Yesterday we went to Chapel Hill and the doctors said he’s going to be a new child, full of energy,” Keshia, 30, said Wednesday. “They said (after the transplant is) when he’ll realize he’d been sick. That’s when he’ll realize how bad he felt.”

Doctors discovered that Forbis was born with one kidney when he was 14 months old. That single kidney is increasingly failing to eliminate excess fluid and electrolytes from his blood.

“He goes about as if he’s normal,” Henry, 31, said. “He knows that he has kidney problems because you have to tell him why he goes to the doctor so much, but if you look at him you’d never know something was wrong with him.”

His mother said that Forbis understands that he’s going to have surgery, and “he’s excited and he’s scared.”

Despite his illness, Forbis has enjoyed a relatively normal childhood. He’s competitive with his three older brothers — ages 8, 10, and 11 — and keeps up with them, his mother said.

“He’s a smarty and he knows it,” she said. “He’s really good in school. He’s mentioned wanting to be a farmer like his dad, but he wants to go to college first.”

Forbis lives with his mother in Greenville, about two hours northeast of Lumber Bridge. His parents are separated.

“Nate wants to be a farmer,” said Henry, 31, a third-generation farmer whose family has grown corn, soybeans and wheat in Lumber Bridge since the late 1950s. “He loves riding farm equipment, that’s for sure. As long as it’s got wheels he doesn’t care (what it is), but his favorite is probably the combine.”

But, his father added, “he loves his mama to death. He might like to ride the farm equipment with me, but he’s a mama’s boy.”

When Brunnet heard that Forbis needed a kidney, he had his blood tested. He and the boy both have type O-positive blood, making him a compatible donor. Neither Keshia nor her mother were matches.

“I was shocked, amazed, thankful, grateful,” Keshia said of Brunnet’s donation. “It’s a blessing, it really is. He’s giving Nate a chance to live, and that’s something I wasn’t able to do.”

Brunnet said his motivation to donate lies in divine payback.

“A few times in my past, I should have died,” he said. “God has done me a lot of favors by keeping me alive, letting me see my sons born and having a wonderful wife, and now it’s my turn to give that favor back to him.”

Decades ago, Brunnet broke a vertebrae in a traffic accident that he said he was lucky to walk away from. “People kept telling me, ‘it’s a miracle you’re alive,’” he said.

During his 20 years, three months and 10 days in the Army, he jumped out of planes and fought in the Gulf War. “There were a few incidents there when I should’ve been killed,” he said. “I asked myself why I’m still around.

“This is the first time since I’ve retired that I’ve been called to serve my fellow man,” he said.

The transplant was postponed from Oct. 6 in order for Brunnet to get a colonoscopy, which is required for donors his age.

“I’m not afraid,” Brunnet said. “I’m more afraid that something’s going to be wrong with me, but I’m not afraid to do this. I do not have any fear of this operation and I don’t have any fear about living with one kidney.

“Someone told me, ‘this is not normal what you’re doing,’” Brunnet said. “In my eyes it is normal. If you can help somebody you have to; that’s what it is to be a Christian. ... Henry, his father, said: How do you thank somebody who’s going to give your son the gift of life?

“Thank you is just fine,” Brunnet said.

Marvin Lynne Maxwell, 56, took up the Forbis’ cause when she heard about the child’s illness at Lumber Bridge Presbyterian Church, which both Brunnet and the Forbis family attend. She and her husband Jimmy decided they needed to do something to help their longtime friends.

“Nate’s dad is the same age as our daughter, Shannon, and they grew up together in church and the community,” she said. “Nate’s grandparents are two of our best friends.

“We talked to some people and said we need to take some action, and it branched out into a community effort.”

Maxwell emphasized that it’s not a church effort, but a community effort — with all of North Carolina forming the community. “We have had people from the Raleigh Triangle area call and ask if they can help.”

More than $30,000 in donations have poured in from people in Robeson, Cumberland, Bladen and Hoke counties, she said. Nearly all the items necessary for the lunch have been donated, and more than 150 people have volunteered to help.

“It’s like what Barney Fife said to Andy Griffith on his show,” Maxwell said. “This is big, really big.”

Maxwell said the money will go entirely to current and future medical expenses: hospital stays, medicines, and travel to Chapel Hill.

“Nate’s going to need that money all his life. He’s going to be taking medications every day,” Brunnet said, referring to the medicines that transplant recipients must take so their bodies don’t reject the foreign organ. “The blood type may be a perfect match, but it’s still a foreign object in his little body.”

Forbis and his brothers will be at the fund-raiser at the Lumber Bridge town hall on Friday at 11 a.m.

“When they first told me they were going to do all this I never thought it would get this big,” Keshia said. “He’s a special little boy — he gets your heart.”

And once he has a new kidney?

“He has the world,” she said.