Member Bio
I can't remember a time before wanting to be a doctor. When I was 7 years-old I met a missionary for the first time. They were missionaries in the Amazon of Brazil. I immediately knew I wanted to be a missionary also, and I drew up plans for "The Amozon Hospital." Before I had ever heard of medical missions, I decided I would be a missionary and a doctor.
Every major decision I made after that kept me on that path. In my church I had to be 15 years-old to go on a youth mission trip. I turned 15 in November and was in Ecuador in December. I took advanced science classes in high school and decided to go to college where I could study pre-med and missions. I fell in love with my future husband talking about medical missions. We went to med school together and chose specialties that would give us broad training that would travel overseas well. I chose Med-Peds, and he Emergency Medicine.
We have been blessed to go on short-term missions to Latin America, Africa, and Asia. We continue to pursue the call and pray that the Lord will lead us and use us for His glory.
Currently we are both on faculty at the University of Mississippi Medical Center. We work with patients and trainees every day and have found this to be an unexpected, but exciting, mission field. God opens the door to minister in so many ways. I have helped students start a Global Health Interest Group, arrange monthly speakers, organize special events. It is amazing to see interest grow, dreams take shape, and lives change.
This is not the mission field I expected, but it is the one to which the Lord has led me. He is wise and good, and I trust Him. I pray that He continue to lead us and give us the strength and courage to follow. Maybe one day we will build that Amazon Hospital. Til then the blue prints hang in my office, and the passion burns in my heart. To God be the glory.