Dan Fielding
Ambassador of the Messiah, Family Medicine Physician, NGO Regional Director
I completed family medicine residency while living and serving in inner-city Memphis, TN. Our program, Christ Community Family Medicine Residency (now the urban track of Cahaba Family Medicine Residency via UAB) was globally focused and allowed me to serve one month per year overseas which led me to working in Iraq, Kashmir (India), and Ethiopia respectively. After my 3rd and final year of residency where I served as co-chief resident, my family and I moved to inner-city Augusta, GA in order to work at a FQHC serving there, Christ Community Health Services Augusta. While there my wife, communications director for CCHF at the time, served in the inner city both medically and through ministry. This included discipleship and evangelism of our community through incarnational living. After two years, we moved to a "closed" area of the Horn of Africa where for the last 6.5 years we have served with an unreached people group in a third world setting. During that time, our work has included me doing traditional things like working in the local medical hospital teaching and consulting, doing home burn care, volunteering with disability projects, and supporting other local initiatives. Currently, our work consists of medical projects (medical screening project, disability project, sports medicine volunteer), water projects (sand dam project), and sports development for young women. While this sounds good and fluid on paper, this story is laced with challenges and hurdles. As a medical provider, coming from successful clinics, medical systems, and trainings, and moving to a difficult third world setting with limited resources, it is easy to carry the burden when things do not always work out. Often it feels like failure, when in reality it is more like trial and error. Spiritually, this can feel like failure as well, when in actuality it could be obedience. We have felt that burden and lived it. We've watched as God has opened some doors and closed others. We've seen how helping build a library can open the door to sports medicine, or how the traditional method of assistance in a clinical teaching setting can actually lead to limited medical and spiritual advancement. Depending on the lens of the observer, our time overseas could be seen as failure or could be seen as an act of service and obedience. We have grown to recognize the difference and would like to pass that along to others.
