AMEN 2006: The Right Arm, the Right Approach, Right Now

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Adventist Medical Evangelism Network (AMEN)

AMEN 2006 Plenary Sessions

Lorayne Barton

Serving God, Saving Souls: The Purpose of Medical Evangelism

AMEN 2006 Progress Notes, Part 1

Don Mackintosh

God’s Right Arm Revealed

Rod Willey

Pews to People

Arthur Weaver

Health Education as Introductory Contact

AMEN 2006 Progress Notes, Part 2

Ted N.C. Wilson

The Spiritual Foundation of the Right Arm

God’s Right Arm Resurrected

Naren James

Sam Soler

From Medical Practice to Ministry: The Experience of the Bluegrass Clinic

Mark Finley

Healthful Living through the Eyes of Grace

Jerry Finneman

Donn LaTour

Allen Lloyd

Phil Mills

Medical Ministry Panel Discussion

AMEN 2006 Progress Notes, Part 3

God’s Right Arm Connected

Zeno Charles-Marcel

Do You Want to be Well? The Challenge of FAITH in Clinical Practice

As we begin here today, I would invite you to pray with me once again as we start.

Our Heavenly Father, I just come to you just now, Lord, asking that the words that come from my mouth would be your words.

Lord, I pray that you would help us to block the things from our mind that we have swirling around, maybe the patience or the needs of the world that we have out there.

Lord, help us just to block those so that we can hear your voice just now.

Lord, I just pray that as this story is told, it is your story, Lord.

I pray that your name would be raised upon high.

Lord, that what has happened to Donna and I would be just a small thing compared to what it would be that you would have for everyone here.

We pray these things in Christ's name, amen.

Well, I graduated from Loma Linda in 1985, really excited, it was really hard to get through.

I wasn't 1 of those perfect students, the ones I always envied.

It took a while for me to really get things down, and it was hard to get through school and I'll tell you what I celebrated when I graduated from there I had had the world by the tail and I was so excited about it we could hardly wait to get back we moved back to Peoria Illinois where I decided that I would associate with a dentist for a year, and then I was going to go back to California, where I was from, and we were going to set up our practice there.

Well, that was 22 years ago, and we're still there.

But what happened through that time was really incredible.

For the first few years of my dental career, I ate, lived, and breathed dentistry.

We had done all the sacrificing, and I had goals.

I wanted to have the large home, nice cars, nice vacations, all the things that a good career could gain.

And I can remember as time went on, it got so into me that that's all I could think about.

I would go to church and I would have my head kind of down on the pew in front of me and I'd be thinking about the production of the last week or the patients and what was coming on in the next week or the problems in the office.

I couldn't get it out of my mind no matter what I was doing.

It was so hard to even hear a sermon during those times.

We have 4 children, all adopted, all blessings from God.

We were very involved with the church, school board chairman, 1 of the elders in the church actually, but we didn't really have a focus on people on the outside.

You see, I thought that there was 2 things.

You have your church life and these things that you were done with and that I grew up with, and then on the other side, you had your career.

And that was what you were really all about, was that career.

We went up to see some good friends of ours, pastor friends up in Michigan.

We drove up and we visited with them and remember we were sitting there talking and telling this the pastor about all the things we were planning and a vacation that we were looking towards going on.

And I can remember him, a dear friend of ours, who said something that just completely took us back, took us completely back.

He looked at my wife as she was talking, and he said, Donna, what are you gonna do with your pride?

I mean, she was a crater roll leader, she was involved with the school as well, and we paid our tithe, and we were good church members.

But you see, he cared enough about us to really cut to the chase.

What are you going to do with your pride?

She stayed up and the rest of us went to bed, and she just was looking at that fire that night.

And what she saw in there, what she saw was the future of a direction that we were going.

Because eternally that was where we would end up, in a fire.

And on the way back to our home, we had to pass through Andrews University, and she stopped there and she she got a new Bible.

She got Leslie Harding's book about the Wilderness Sanctuary.

She went home and she started reading that.

She started learning things and It was really interesting because as time went on, she got so excited about what she was learning and where she was at that I'd come home at the end of the day and the breakfast dishes were still on the table.

But as she would get up early in the morning and she would go through these devotions, and as I was getting ready for work, she would start telling me about the things that she had been studying that day.

And she would start reading them to me, and I can remember it going through my mind as I was working on patients and doing the usual drill and fill, but I would be thinking about what she said.

And I can remember 1 day something happened.

You see, I never really mixed the 2, the church and the office, my spiritual walk and my business life.

But 1 day my office manager came to me and she started telling me about problems that we were having in the office.

And I said, you know what we have to do here?

If we're gonna have backbiting that goes on that's happening because the people aren't talking to each other.

The Bible says that we should go to 1 another if that's the case.

And I brought everybody together and for the first time I talked about what the Bible says.

And how that we should talk to each other and if there was any problems and then get someone else and and but but try To work it out amongst themselves and it made a difference in our in our office Things started calming down and it was soon after that.

I walked into our office manager's office and I could tell something was very wrong.

And she was in there and I just looked at her and I just said, Ange, what's going on?

And she started telling me about things that was going on in her life and and I looked at her and I said, you know, without God in your life these things are never going to change.

And then she did something that absolutely changed my life.

She looked at me and she said, Would you and Donna, would you guys mind studying with my husband and I?

And I was taken aback because I'd never done a Bible study.

I was thinking, well, we, you know, the pastor, he does some, and the head elder, he's doing some Bible studies, but me?

I was 37 years old at the time, 20 years of Adventist education, all sorts of seminars all the way along, and nice things.

We had all the stuff, all the training, but not once have I ever given a Bible study to someone that was not an Adventist.

And I just kind of blurted out, well, sure.

And I walked out and she went to the assistant office manager and she told the assistant office manager, she said, I am so excited.

Doc and his wife are gonna study with my husband and I and the assistant office manager she looks at her and she says this She says you know my husband and I We we really don't know anything about the Bible.

Do you think they would mind if we came to?

And so we ended up doing this Bible study with my office manager, the assistant office manager of their husbands.

I went home that night and I told Donna what was going on and I was pretty excited about it, but we were pretty nervous and we didn't know what to do.

And I got all of these brochures out and got the dust off of them and started looking at the it is written and the amazing facts stuff and all the different you know different stuff that's out there and I went through a whole bunch of them nothing seemed to nothing seemed to fit.

Don and I got together and we did 1 thing right we got our knees and we prayed.

We just asked God to guide us along the way.

We got up off of our knees and we both felt impressed that what we needed to do is we just needed to simply start in the Scripture, just open up the Bible, Just start in Genesis.

And our whole goal, we decided, was that if we could get them to learn how to study their Bible, if they could just learn how to search Scripture for themselves, then we would have reached the goal.

You see, if you teach someone to fish, they can eat for a lifetime.

If you give them a fish, they only have a good meal.

But if they're teaching through Scripture, if they learn how to search the Scriptures, they can eat for a lifetime through this.

I remember that first day when we got together and they came to our house.

Donna and I were at this quandary, and it was a half hour before we started, and we got in this argument.

And we were just at each other's throat over I don't even remember what.

I remember stopping and saying, Donna, hold it.

We got down and we knelt and asked God to guide and direct in this study.

They came and we started teaching them about Scripture.

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AMEN 2006 Plenary Sessions

Pews to People

Transcript

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