Can a church in a poor and vulnerable community run a sustainable healthcare ministry in her community?
Yes, if the church and short term medical team are well prepared for ministry. Here are the steps we have taken in Ghana to enable local churches run sustainable healthcare ministries as result of short term medical teams equipping them.
Both parenthood and missions are God's idea. But can these two crucial roles fit well together? In this session, a couple with 8 years experience raising children on the mission field will share insights into balancing parenthood and missions.
“Prepare your shields, both large and small, and march out for battle! Harness the horses, mount the steeds! Take your positions with helmets on! Polish your spears, put on your armor!”
Jeremiah 46
If God has called you to be a healthcare missionary, you will experience one of the most satisfying – and challenging – careers in the world. You will be a warrior for God in a hostile land. Like any soldier, you need a time of preparation – what the military refers to as “boot camp” – and that time should begin before you enter your mission field. The time to live, think and pray like a missionary is now!
"A disciple is not above his teacher...if they persecuted me, they will persecute you...if they have called the head of the house Beelzebub, what will they call the members of his house?" Since Genesis 3, all human beings have suffered, but disciples of Jesus, especially those who seek to glorify Him as missionaries, inevitably enter into His peculiar sufferings: loneliness, alienation, rejection, humiliation, and physical pain. Some disciples will pay the ultimate price of martyrdom.
We don't pursue suffering for its own sake, but obedient disciples can't avoid hardships. We need a biblical theology of suffering that protects us from despair--and allows us to benefit from suffering's redemptive and maturing power.
2 Kings chapter 2 through 8 list 16 miracles related to the prophets Elijah and Elisha. 2 Kings 7:2 says something I have frequently found myself saying: "Even if the Lord opened the window of Heaven might this thing be..." Or translated it might say "That couldn't happen" or "God can't possibly do that." My stories of God's goodness and answers to prayer fit in the category of 1. Impossible Obstructions, 2. Impossible odds, 3. Impossible Poverty, 4. Impossible visibility, and 5. Impossible timing. They illustrate how God Provided, Guided, Protected, and demonstrated His Providence over 81 years as a missionary child of a medical missionary and then a medical missionary starting in 1966 in Ethiopia.
