Would you like the freedom to integrate your Christian faith into your clinical practice? Do you want to spend more time with your family? Are you free to be mobile?
If you're willing to pluck yourself from material entanglements, then a stint as a medical missionary could be the life changing experience you're looking for! Medical missionaries are not super-special Christians, workaholics, ascetics, hermits, lovers of extreme climates, people who never have families. In short, they are not people who are 'not like me'!
From our ten year experience in the remote Western Province of Papua New Guinea, we can say something about what being a missionary is.
Integrating medicine and ministry
You will be vitally involved in spreading the Gospel in partnership with national evangelists and growing churches. Opportunities for evangelistic or Bible teaching activities will often be wide open. You are free to integrate your health work and ministry - to pray with patients and worship with staff. Good use will be made of your professional knowledge and every other practical skill.
It's tremendously fulfilling, making any associated hardships seem insignificant. Have we forgotten that 'those who come to me cannot be my disciples unless they love me more than they love father, mother, wife and children and themselves as well' (Luke 14:26)? You will learn from another people group to value people and relationships over activities and possessions and to see your own culture with more realistic eyes.
Great for the family
It's the most family nurturing lifestyle imaginable. You may be at home with the family most mealtimes. Without TV and shopping we all have more time together. Some missionary mums are able to teach their own children through Distance Education. You can bring children up in a Christian community, in societies where children are loved and nurtured, with wide open spaces. Our situation is like this, but of course not all are. Although families at home are missed acutely, you gain new members: 'Anyone who leaves home or wife or brothers or parents or children for the sake of the Kingdom of God will receive much more in this present age and eternal life in the age to come' (Luke 18: 29-30).
God changing you from the inside
You will allow God to form your character. As you venture out of your comfort zone you will learn to rely more on our intimate God. Yes, there are times of stress, frustration, sickness, loneliness, and lack of confidence or knowledge but we have all found God is trustworthy and close through these times. Living in community will cause you to learn about yourself and you will experience God graciously changing you from the inside as you learn to live in love.
Alternative lifestyle
You are not always chronically overworked with never-ending streams of patients. Ideally a health professional is part of a team who can support each other in working reasonable hours, sharing on-call and the stress of emergencies, taking regular holidays, and encouraging each other to be actively involved in ministry.
We invite you to come and taste mission for yourself. Most mission hospitals could use a hand for any length of time you have available. Why not go to the mission field 'for one or two years'? You may end up being there ten, like us!
Mark and Judy Fitzmaurice graduated as doctors in Sydney, Australia. Their mission works with UFM Worldwide and with the Evangelical Church of Papua New Guinea.
If you're willing to pluck yourself from material entanglements, then a stint as a medical missionary could be the life changing experience you're looking for! Medical missionaries are not super-special Christians, workaholics, ascetics, hermits, lovers of extreme climates, people who never have families. In short, they are not people who are 'not like me'!
From our ten year experience in the remote Western Province of Papua New Guinea, we can say something about what being a missionary is.
Integrating medicine and ministry
You will be vitally involved in spreading the Gospel in partnership with national evangelists and growing churches. Opportunities for evangelistic or Bible teaching activities will often be wide open. You are free to integrate your health work and ministry - to pray with patients and worship with staff. Good use will be made of your professional knowledge and every other practical skill.
It's tremendously fulfilling, making any associated hardships seem insignificant. Have we forgotten that 'those who come to me cannot be my disciples unless they love me more than they love father, mother, wife and children and themselves as well' (Luke 14:26)? You will learn from another people group to value people and relationships over activities and possessions and to see your own culture with more realistic eyes.
Great for the family
It's the most family nurturing lifestyle imaginable. You may be at home with the family most mealtimes. Without TV and shopping we all have more time together. Some missionary mums are able to teach their own children through Distance Education. You can bring children up in a Christian community, in societies where children are loved and nurtured, with wide open spaces. Our situation is like this, but of course not all are. Although families at home are missed acutely, you gain new members: 'Anyone who leaves home or wife or brothers or parents or children for the sake of the Kingdom of God will receive much more in this present age and eternal life in the age to come' (Luke 18: 29-30).
God changing you from the inside
You will allow God to form your character. As you venture out of your comfort zone you will learn to rely more on our intimate God. Yes, there are times of stress, frustration, sickness, loneliness, and lack of confidence or knowledge but we have all found God is trustworthy and close through these times. Living in community will cause you to learn about yourself and you will experience God graciously changing you from the inside as you learn to live in love.
Alternative lifestyle
- Exciting - where else can you fly in small planes over spectacular mountains and feel your pulse race?
- Exotic - or snorkel off palm-fringed beaches on holiday?
- Thrilling - when you save your first baby by Caesarean section.
- Breathtaking - when you wake each morning to the most beautiful view and thank God for his blessings!
- Uplifting - seeing people born into God's family and growing in it.
You are not always chronically overworked with never-ending streams of patients. Ideally a health professional is part of a team who can support each other in working reasonable hours, sharing on-call and the stress of emergencies, taking regular holidays, and encouraging each other to be actively involved in ministry.
We invite you to come and taste mission for yourself. Most mission hospitals could use a hand for any length of time you have available. Why not go to the mission field 'for one or two years'? You may end up being there ten, like us!
Mark and Judy Fitzmaurice graduated as doctors in Sydney, Australia. Their mission works with UFM Worldwide and with the Evangelical Church of Papua New Guinea.
