Objectives 1. To encourage attendees to participate in short-term overseas medical mission trips. 2. To show examples of how to structure a short-term overseas medical missionary clinic. 3. To show the value of a vision clinic to break down barriers in overseas medical missionary work.

AMEN 2018: Call to Service

Objectives 1. To encourage attendees to participate in short-term overseas medical mission trips. 2. To show examples of how to structure a short-term overseas medical missionary clinic. 3. To show the value of a vision clinic to break down barriers in overseas medical missionary work.

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Adventist Medical Evangelism Network (AMEN)

Breakout Session A

Ken Pierson

The Nuts and Bolts of Global Dentistry

David DeRose

The Far-Reaching Grasp of High Blood Pressure

David Woosuk Lee

Type II Diabetes, Addiction, & “The Loud Cry”

Melinda Skau

Painful Past: Medical Effects and Eternal Opportunities

Brad Emde

Structuring Efficient Short-term Overseas Medical Missionary Trips

Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you for your many blessings.

We thank you for the opportunity to meet together and uplift 1 another and may we share and and Encourage 1 another to do service in your vineyard Wherever it is, whether it's at our own office or school or church or overseas.

And so we ask that your Holy Spirit be here, be with me and give me clarity of thought and speak through me in your name I pray, amen.

So amen, the theme for this year is called to service.

It is to encourage each of us as doctors, dentists, eye doctors, eye surgeons, nurses, pastors, any lay person to be involved in medical evangelism in all its many forms, whether it's medical care, vision care, dental care, community help teams, providing services to community needs, health and lifestyle seminars, praying with patients in our own clinics, or whatever capacity that you're in.

But this lecture is designed to help 1 answer the call to service, specifically overseas.

And so we're going to give some examples later of how 1 could go about structuring an efficient yet effective overseas mission clinic in a variety of different settings.

Dennis Benedict because he's to blame for all of my trips and in this lecture even because he's the 1 several years ago back in 2000, well he started on me probably in 2012 for a couple of years at least, ribbing me a little bit, trying to get me to go on overseas mission trips.

And finally I said, okay Dennis, you know it's 1 of those that you kind of dread to see him coming because you know what he's going to say.

And I said, all right Dennis, I said I'll make a deal with you.

And So the next 1 that you go on, you call me and if I can do it I will.

So he did and long story short we ended up going to Costa Rica in 2014 and had a great time and since then I have been to Peru and Mongolia and Moldova and shortly to Kenya.

So how many in the room have gone on overseas mission trips?

So all of you could be up here saying the same thing that I have, and what you've probably learned is that no 2 mission trips are alike.

You will think, okay, I've kind of got my grasp on this, And so after I went on my first 1 without Dennis, which would have been my second trip, I'm like, well, at least I have a little idea of what we did down there.

And it did help me a lot, but then you've got to change it because it wasn't the same.

And So, but these are our learning objectives here today, and that is first, I want to encourage all of you and all of you that might be listening wherever you are hearing this around the world to participate in short-term overseas medical mission trips, and we're going to dive into why.

Secondly, to show examples of how to structure a short-term overseas medical missionary clinic and then to show the value of vision specifically to break down barriers in overseas medical missionary work.

So let's dive into number 1 to encourage everyone to go.

So we have to ask ourselves 3 questions, 3 and 3 why questions.

Some people are called to serve full-time somewhere in the world, which is fantastic.

But they have to be supported in some way for living expenses.

So an organization needs to sponsor them or they're going to have to work over there a little bit on the side or something to be able to live and provide or have somebody, a church or somebody sponsor them, maybe a grant or a foundation.

So short-term trips are something that it really allows everyone to experience serving others outside your normal environment in a way that you can normally save up enough money to finance it yourself.

So I know, Tom, what you've done with some of your savings there in your practice, and you're like, okay, I'm just going to dedicate that to mission work.

And there's ways that you can kind of plan ahead and short-term isn't so expensive as going for 3 years or something like that.

And then it allows you also to have that fire for overseas missions but yet when you come back you help finance those that are over there because you love missions now and so you're gonna help people that you can't go full time that are full time, because they need our help.

No matter what your profession, whether you're a doctor, nurse, dentist, minister, teacher, it doesn't matter, you are called to serve those people that God puts in your path right where you are, right in your office, right in your clinic, your school, your church, wherever.

That might be for me in Greenville, Tennessee, or it might be in Indian Wells, California, or Quito's, Peru.

We're gonna, I'm gonna give you about 8 or 9 points.

This is my wife and that is a sloth on her shoulder.

And so, you know, we've had a few decades underneath our belts and I never thought that I would ever hold a sloth or see 1 in the wild and let alone have 1 around my neck while I'm refracting a patient in the middle of the Amazon jungle in a little clinic down the Amazon River in Peru.

So if you would have told me that a little baby sloth would be hanging onto my neck, watching me change lenses in front of a patient, I would have thought you were crazy.

You would have told me that 20 years ago when I was coming out of optometry school.

I would have thought, you're crazy, there's no way I'm going to be doing that.

He's probably correcting me and thinking, no, that's wrong.

But, and then if you would have told me that I'd be hiking around Machu Picchu with my kids, I would have thought you were crazy.

We got to spend a day there on the way home.

If you would have told me that Dennis and I would be feeding toucans with food in my mouth and letting them pluck the food right out of my mouth, in Costa Rica, I thought you would be crazy.

You would have told me that I'd be riding a double-humped Bactrim camel in Mongolia.

I would have thought you were crazy, versus the single hump, you know, the dromedaries that we have here.

And, or watching a sunset walking amongst the gares in Mongolia.

Or how about walking the Great Wall of China near Beijing on the way back from Mongolia at our layover that we had there.

This also allows you to see and learn new cultures and taste new foods and things like that.

So luckily you just ate hopefully, but this is Moldovian food.

Moldovian food if you ever have a chance to eat it, eat it.

They fed us so well when we were in Moldova.

You get to taste all these things all the way around the world.

It forces you to learn at least, in part, a new language.

You make new friends when you go overseas.

So these were 2 ladies in Mongolia that were just, I couldn't help myself, and they were cracking up and so was I.

And beautiful little children in Moldova.

Angela with some ladies that, I believe these are the ones that fixed some of our food for us at 1 of the churches.

You get to work with teams that you would never work with otherwise.

It is a written organization that organized that trip a couple years ago.

We had 120 volunteers on that trip from all over the world.

And if you notice, standing next to me is Dr.

Jacob Prabhakar from Eyes for India, and I would never have gotten an opportunity to work with him.

He's a retina specialist out of Kentucky.

And his daughters are there, Sydney and Sophie.

Bob Dirkos over here and his wife Linda, he's a retired optician.

John Soul, who's over here, he's a ophthalmic technician.

And then from our home church, Kevin and Kezia Finley's not pictured here, but their daughters here, Kayla and Kieran, also helped in the vision clinics.

And you get to meet people and work beside people from all over the world.

And then our students that we took to us to Moldova, here and here, that's Judah Brass and that is Gerardo Miguel Perez, and they're friends that they made, which later in the week came up, probably some of these right here even, for the altar call that our associate pastor made.

And it's because of these relationships and encouraging, you know, you just make friends, and we still are in contact with people all over the world.

And so, it broadens your overall knowledge too.

Series

Breakout Session A

Structuring Efficient Short-term Overseas Medical Missionary Trips

Transcript

Description

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

Attachments

WYC 2012 Morning Devotional

Fruits and Gifts, Part 2

43m

Bold unto the Throne Seminars

Sanctuary in Relation to Mission

57m

Optical

Small Differences with Big Consequences: A Story of Underrated Maladies

56m

Elder's Basic Training and Deacon & Deaconess Basic Training

Elder’s Basic Training - Part 1

1h 7m

GoTential

The Tentmakers Tactical Advantage

33m

“Stolen Valor”

38m

Plenary Sessions

AMEN 2022 Mission Program

50m

Surprised by Love

1h

Sabbath School 3rd Quarter 2025: Exodus

10 The Covenant and the Blueprint

27m

Something Worse

52m

His Truth Is Marching On

49m

Morning Devotional

Devotional

34m

Sound Doctrine