We long to see healthcare professionals practising, modelling and mentoring competent, compassionate medicine, but doing so in places where they will influence unreached people groups for Christ.
For many years healthcare professionals wishing to be involved in cross-cultural mission in Africa have been encouraged to partner with church health care providers. However, the church/mission hospital paradigm is less applicable these days and alternative models are increasingly appropriate. This might involve partnerships with governments or other NGOs, basic community health work or a variety of creative alternatives. The need for this kind of health ministry is everywhere – we don’t aspire, however, to trying to meet that need anywhere, but more strategically among unreached people (directly or indirectly).
Often it’s more appropriate to go to a place, live there and figure out, in conjunction with the local community, how to be involved after one arrives. The idea that you can take a pre-determined programme or plan and simply implement it may exist in the popular Western mindset (all these needy people need the help that we can offer), but we aspire to more than simply doing things for people and communities.
Do you have medical skills that you could use to serve in a mission hospital in rural Madagascar? Use your profession to love and serve peoples’ physical needs, whilst sharing your love for Jesus to meet the spiritual needs of the unreached Tsimihety people.
Christine Oliver shares how she was able to witness God at work, bringing together his perfect plan, as she served as a trained nurse and midwife in the Central African Republic.
Ann serves as a doctor in Chad, meeting people in their homes and also treating them and their children for mental illness and epilepsy.
We long to see health professionals practising, modelling and mentoring competent, compassionate medicine, but doing so in places where they will influence unreached people groups for Christ.
“You shall remember all the way the Lord your God has led you.” Deuteronomy 8:2. Rosemary Molyneux shares her memories from her time in Kenya.
When I started working in the Aids Awareness Programme in 2002, Aids was a taboo. Nobody talked about it, and people who tested positive hid their test results from others. People discriminated against those with the disease and even stigmatised them.
