BATON ROUGE - A 15-year-old is thanking the Baton Rouge community for raising the money needed to purchase him a bionic arm.

John Francis is like many teens his age. He likes video games like Minecraft and Guild Wars, activities like Taekwondo and riding bikes and playing instruments like the xylophone and snare drum. With his new bionic arm, all his favorite activities are just a little easier.

"It's something as simple as holding multiple things at once that I feel like a lot of people never think about because it's second nature to them," John Francis said.

John Francis was born without his right hand.

"I was born with a condition called Amniotic Band Syndrome," he said.

According to John Francis, he came across Open Bionics, a prosthetics company, and the Hero PRO, a bionic hand, on Reddit. His mother, Monica Francis, said the price tag for the Hero Pro was a little more than $24,000.

"John came to me and said he wanted an arm; it was time. We had so much going on. I said, 'John, you've got to go and just find it, we'll make it happen, we'll figure it out,'" Monica Francis said.

Earlier this year, the family decided to try to raise the money.

However, Monica Francis said she went to her pastor for advice towards the end of the fundraising campaign because not enough money had been raised. The pastor connected the family with a group that made a video sharing John Francis' story. Following the video, Monica Francis said donations came flooding in.

"Within four and a half days, we had to stop the donations. Because this community, from neighbors who had watched John from when he was little, riding a bike with one arm, dentists, doctors, school, the community came out of the woodwork," Monica Francis said. "He got his arm because of the Baton Rouge community. It's amazing."

Now, John Francis gets to do all the things he loves. For that, he said he is thankful.

"For me, being able to hold things in both hands, even if it's only two things, being able to switch it, so I have a free hand, it's very empowering," he said.

A spokesperson for Open Bionics said Barksdale Dentistry, Pediatric Dental Specialists, Church of the King, Sequitur, Collective Salon, Redeeming Word of Life, First New Testament, Dr. Billy May and many others helped get John Francis his bionic arm.