In Testimonies to the Church Volume 8 page 77, Ellen White wrote: “The medical missionary work is to be to the work of the church as the right arm to the body.” She went on to state that “The medical missionary work is the gospel in practice.” Clearly, medical missionary work is important, but what is it and what are some practical ways you and I can get involved? Join Esther Louw in this episode of the GYC Beyond Podcast as she discusses these questions and more with Dr. Lela Lewis.

<p>In Testimonies to the Church Volume 8 page 77, Ellen White wrote: “The medical missionary work is to be to the work of the church as the right arm to the body.” She went on to state that “The medical missionary work is the gospel in practice.” Clearly, medical missionary work is important, but what is it and what are some practical ways you and I can get involved? Join Esther Louw in this episode of the GYC Beyond Podcast as she discusses these questions and more with Dr. Lela Lewis.</p>

<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

Generation. Youth. Christ. (GYC)

Shauna Chung

Lisa Topete

GYC Beyond

01- Incorporating Evangelism into Your Life

Mark Finley

02- How to Live a Consecrated Life

Sebastien Braxton

03- How to Navigate Past Brick Walls

Amy Sheppard

04- Leadership and Time Management

Gem Castor

05 - How to Have a Powerful Life of Prayer

Natasha Dysinger

Esther Louw

06 - How to Have a Vibrant Devotional Life

Justin Kim

07- How to Teach an Interesting Sabbath School Lesson

Adam Ramdin

08 - Discovering Our Christian Heritage

Anthony Bosman

09 - Why Christianity?

Moise Ratsara

10- Why You Should Be Involved in Your Local Church

Janet Page

Jerry Page

11- How to Experience Revival and Reformation

David Skau

12- How to Reach Out to Refugees and Immigrants

Neale Schofield

13- How to Use Media and Art for God

Tara Vang

14 - The Power of Sharing Your Faith

Lela Lewis

15 - How to Get Involved in Medical Missionary Work

Carl Brugger

16 - Why You Should Volunteer for GYC

Andy Im

17 - How to Overcome Temptation

Michelle Doucoumes

18 - The Heart of Ministry

Doug Batchelor

19 - How to Overcome an Ice Cream Addiction

Kyle Allen

20 - How to be a Part of Total Member Involvement

Nathaniel Justin Khoe

21 - How to Create a Social Media Ministry

Wayne Blakely

Michael Carducci

Danielle Harrison

Ronald Woolsey

22 - Coming Out Ministries: Sexual Identity & Adventism

Gary Blanchard

23 - How to Live Dangerously for God


In testimonies to the church, Ellen White wrote, the medical missionary work is to be the work of the church as the right arm to the body. She went on to say, the medical missionary work is the gospel in practice. Clearly, medical missionary work is important, But what is it and what are some practical ways you and I can get involved? Hi, this is Esther Lowe. Join me in this episode of the GYC Beyond podcast as Dr.

Leila Lewis addresses these questions. Hi, Dr. Leila, It's so wonderful to have you here. Welcome to the GYC Beyond Podcast. I wanna first start off by having you tell us a little bit about yourself.

Well, first of all, thank you Esther for having me. It's just a pleasure to be here with you. You know, I am an obstetrician and gynecologist. I actually finished medical school in 2001. And then I did my residency and my master's in public health and finished residency in 2009.

Awesome. So today we're talking a bit more about medical missionary work. In your words, what is medical missionary work and what isn't it? Well, medical missionary work is sharing whole person care with the individuals you're trying to witness to. So that means physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual healing offered to the patients.

What it isn't is just providing physical care. There's a lot of organizations out there doing a lot of really good work, but if we don't offer the whole person healing, we really haven't done anything at all. And of course that's what Jesus did. We're just following his example, and here we get the opportunity of being his hands and feet. So in my opinion, that's what it is and that's what it's not.

That's awesome. How did you start trying to put this whole person care into action in your life? Personally, it started many years ago. I remember back in college, actually. I was always a pretty good student.

I knew for many, many years I wanted to be a physician. And just to give you just a tiny tidbit about me, I've always kind of had missionary work in my blood. I was born in Africa. Oh wow. My parents were missionaries.

In fact, I barely escaped with my life. I was only a baby at the time. It was a coup. The government came in, took the hospital over. You know, massive massacres.

My parents barely got out. Of course, baby me barely got out. And so in my mind, I always knew someday, in 1 capacity or another, I wanted to be a missionary. And so through actually high school and even college I knew I wanted to be a physician, wanted to go to Loma Linda by God's grace. I got into Loma Linda and when I started medical school I sought to really try my best to be involved in different mission trips, but it wasn't until really during late medical school and early residency that I began to put into practice some of the things that I was learning as I was reading the Spirit of Prophecy.

Right. So what are the first things that you put into practice? Well, the very first things I put into practice was actually being Isaiah 58 to people. I actually literally drove around with a few friends of mine. We would drive around San Bernardino and pick people up, homeless people, bring them meals and then take them to church.

And so from there I began to realize there was more I could do. I'm a medical student. I know a little bit about medicine, not a lot, a little bit. And so I began to try to help their physical needs while I was continuing to provide them other ways, you know, food and clothing and those kinds of things, but as we were also presenting spiritual needs too. And as I got further along in my career, I realized that there was even more I could do, but not just me individually.

I wanted to open it up to the church at large. And a lot of praying, and from there God started something called, allowed me to start something called Right Arm of Love. We actually provided health screening. I had just barely finished my internship. So any young people listening right now, if you think you're not done with your training and can't do anything, don't even listen to that.

That's just a temptation of Satan. I hadn't even finished internship. Wow. Didn't even have my license. And God said, do this thing at the Arizona State Fair.

And so that first year, over a course of 2 and a half weeks, we provided health screening at the time for almost 3, 000 patients. And so from there, God taught me mass scale health, if you will. But I wanted to do more than health screening. I wanted to actually provide people with the training that I had been provided more than you know nursing is wonderful praise the Lord for nurses but you know as physicians we know how to do even you know a little bit more than that. I want to be able to have our practitioners be able to offer those.

And so we continued to expand, and from there I began to do health lectures. God provided open doors. Again, no license, and I'm meeting with the governor of the state of Arizona. I was interviewed on NBC, CBS. NBC actually asked me to be their medical correspondent.

And again, I didn't even have my license yet. So God and his providence did provide me with my education. And yes, I am a board certified OBGYN today. But anyway, long story short, God led me into Pathway to Health and that's what we're doing now. So really for you, medical missionary work started at the same time as your own medical career.

Basically, yeah. And they grew together. Yeah. And that's a really powerful story, especially, you know, not even having your license yet and you were doing things for a lot of people. How did the idea come to you to be able to do it on a massive scale with a lot more people?

Some people may have heard of the ministry that you currently work with, Pathways to Health. Could you tell us a little bit more about how that started? So Your Best Pathway to Health really started kind of as an idea, dream if you will, in about 2013. But again it even started before then. When we began to do these health events at the Arizona State Fair, I believe God was training me how to do mass scale numbers of patients with lots of different people under the auspices of the Seventh-day Adventist Church.

So that was my goal, was to really revitalize medical missionary work within our church. I feel like sometimes as physicians and providers, we've kind of gotten a little sidetracked and this is an opportunity to do that. So how it came about was I was the brand newly elected president of some organization called Pacific Union ASI. It's a chapter of Adventist Layman Services and Industries And 1 of our speakers stood up and showed us a video of an organization that's not even Christian, and they provide free health, kind of some minor health things and some dental work. And they basically said at the end of it, you know what?

Adventists, it's nice that you're meeting together once a year for your meetings, but what are you doing for the people around you? Wow. And it was like a bolt of lightning went up and down my spine and God was like, do this. And I had a baby, a nursing baby, and 3 other little children in addition to my nursing baby who was only 2 and a half months at the time and I was a practicing Obijuoyen and I'm like God I don't know how to do this this is the United States this is not Africa this is not you know wherever this is the United States and we have a lot of licensing issues and we can't just do this in the United States and God was like, no you do this. And so with lots of fasting and lots of praying at all hours of the night, literally 03:00 in the morning, many many nights in a row, God I don't know how to do this.

Tell me what to do. I don't know what to do. And he created an organization that literally came out of nowhere. And it was all of us working together, Seventh-day Adventist Christians working together in our various aspects. I mean We had plumbers, we had electricians running the plumbing and the electricity.

We have people that walk patients from location to location. Of course we have the physicians and the dentists and the nurses, etc. But all working together to provide on a massive scale whole person care. Pastors working alongside lay people. So you use this word whole person care a lot and I noticed you talking about plumbers being involved, pastors being involved.

Whole person care, it's not just someone who has a medical degree, right? Absolutely, absolutely. In fact, 80% of our volunteers for our organization are non-medical. Oh, wow. And so they can do all kinds of things?

We do all sorts of things besides the medical. I mean, we have what we call beautician and barber services where people get free haircuts. We have people who run the clothing department and they distribute. In fact, in San Antonio we had a huge section of men's suits. Men's Warehouse had donated a whole bunch of, I actually think it was 300 men's suits.

And we were able to give those out. And you should have seen the men. They were so happy. For the first time in their lives many of them had never had a suit before ever and they had this nicely fitted tailored suit for themselves and we have legal services and we have children's services and you name it whatever actually what happens usually is someone will call in or write in and say, Hey, I'm this, that, or the other. Do you have any role for me?

And I'm like, Yeah, why not? Praise the Lord. Let's go for it. So that's usually how our new departments start. Wow.

So you've been running since 2013? We began planning for our first event in 2014. Yeah, so in 2013, we began planning for 2014. What are some of the stories that you've had, some of the highlights from the last few years? Well, actually, I was just telling this 1 the other day.

It actually comes back to the men's suit. We had, again, the men's warehouse donating the suits there in San Antonio. There was a young man, he came in and he had been living with a woman for some time and his reason for not marrying her was that he didn't have a church to get married. He stated so anyway. Didn't have a church and he didn't have the money to buy a suit or a tuxedo as the case may be.

Well, the pastor after he got his dental work and he got his hair cut, he actually led him over. He starts talking to him a little bit about his situation and encouraging him to marry the woman if he felt like this is the woman that God wanted him to marry. Otherwise, he needed to separate and follow God's plan. So the pastor's talking to him and he finds out he's concerned because he doesn't have a men's suit. He goes, you know what, I have just the thing for you.

He walks him over, gets him to the men's suit area, and it just so happens that there was only 1 tuxedo left in the whole area and it fit the man perfectly. And so then the young man said, well you know I don't have a dress for my wife though or my soon to be fiancee wife. You know that might be a problem." And the guy goes, let me see about that. He goes and he talks to the tailor and the tailor says, you know what, I have this 1 wedding dress and I'm not sure what in the world to do with it. And he pulls this dress out, sure enough it's a wedding dress.

And it just so happens to fit the bride perfectly. So now he has a tuxedo, he has a wedding dress and then the guy goes, this 1 last thing he had is this issue was, well I don't have a pastor or a church to get married. He goes, you know what, you are just in the right place because I'm a pastor right here. I have a church and of course I'll be happy to officiate your wedding and sure enough, praise the Lord, the couple did get married with the pastor. So you know there's just a lot and we don't know.

We don't know this side of heaven. We don't know what impact that will make in the long term for so many people. And I don't think we can judge any of it, although, praise the Lord, we've had hundreds of baptisms. In San Antonio, I think there was 135 baptisms as a direct result of pathway. But we can't judge events based on an immediate response.

These kinds of things can sometimes take a lifetime. And we really won't know this side of heaven, what the results of what we do are. Every time you organize 1 of these events, there are things that could go wrong at any time. What is a miracle that's happened for you in 1 of these events where you thought that something wouldn't work out and it did? Well, your husband can tell I'm sure a lot of those stories too.

Eric's worked with us for years, so we're very grateful for that. But, you know, I actually think back to Pathway Phoenix, and we just felt really impressed that we wanted to be offering actual major surgeries on the floor. You know, we had done some minor surgeries under a lidocaine and those kinds of things, but we wanted to actually have conscious sedation, offer hernia repairs. I mean, my goal is to actually on the floor to be able to offer full surgical procedures, but that requires a little bit more than what we have right now. So in order to do conscious sedation, which is basically where the patients are asleep and then we're able to operate on them, we needed to have a vehicle or at least an RV of sorts.

So we could do cataract surgeries, we could do hernia repairs and different other things there on the floor. That vehicle would have all the equipment that you need? It had basically just an enclosed environment and then we performed the sterile procedure in it. Well, we prayed about it, we sought these vehicles, we couldn't find any anywhere. We kept, they kept saying, oh, we wish, you know, for this, that and the other reason, we wish it would have worked out, but it's not going to work out.

Come down, literally to the day we're setting up the event, And come to find out, we didn't just get 1 RV. We got 2 RVs that literally came from nowhere, and I believe they came from God. And because of that, we were able to do cataracts. We ended up being able to do actual hernia repairs on the floor of the Phoenix Convention Center. We were doing scopes of the uterus or hysteroscopies, cystoscopies, they even did a mastectomy on the floor.

A partial mastectomy I should say. But you know God is so good and when we, I think if we limit him we're just never able to see what he has in store for us. So yes, there's many, many other instances like that. This is just powerful, just hearing some of these stories, which I'm sure just like a little piece of what you've experienced every single time you have a Pathways event. When is the next Pathways event, and how can a young person who may not have medical experience, how can they get involved?

Well, those are excellent questions. So the very next Pathway is Pathway Fort Worth, and that will be at the Will Rogers Stadium, September 19 to 21, so just a few weeks away right now. We're looking forward to young people in particular being involved. Young people can volunteer everywhere. Of course, let's say you're going into nursing school or you're going into dental hygiene or dentistry or whatever, wherever you'd like to volunteer, you're welcome to assist in.

But if you're not interested in the medical areas, there's tons of other places you can volunteer. You can volunteer in spiritual wellness or chaplaincy. They can volunteer in something called patient assistant transport, where you actually walk patients from location to location. Another area where millennials in particular and young people coming up have a real talent and that is in social media and communication. There's a huge communication department.

We need a lot more volunteers in that area too. Just letting not just the community know, but actually the whole world to know what's taking place right there in Fort Worth as an example of what they can do, Seventh-day Adventist Christians can do when we partner together, when we work together collaboratively around the world. Wow. Now what about those people who can't make it? Maybe they live in a part of America that's too far away from Pathways event and they don't have the money to get there.

Or maybe they live in Europe or Australia or another country. How could they maybe start a similar event or do something in their community for promoting this whole person care? Well, absolutely. Well, first of all, go to God because he'll tell you what he wants you to do. And don't be surprised if he tells you to do something that you think you can't do.

Because he has bigger plans than we do and we just can't limit him. But the next thing I would recommend is try to get together with as many people as you can and don't limit yourself. Don't limit yourself to, oh I only think this way and that group of people thinks that way and thereby we can't work together. Let God be the judge of that and you'll see beauty in unity. And that's I think that's my biggest biggest kind of little soapbox if you will is that we need to all come together under the beautiful unity of being Jesus' hands and feet.

And when we work together, God blesses. Wow. So basically, it's really if someone wants to start an event like this or do something different to promote whole person care, it's about getting together, not limiting God, and dreaming big. Exactly. All right.

Thank you so much for sharing just a brief picture of Pathways to Health. I really appreciate what you've done and how you've been promoting and pushing these events around America and we also appreciate that you were able to come here and share. If someone wants to get in touch with you, is there a website that they can go to to find out more about Pathways to Health? Absolutely, they can go to Pathways to Health if they want to volunteer specifically, pathwaytohealthvolunteer.org. That's pathwaytohealthvolunteer.org.

Thank you very much. Thank you. We appreciate your time. Thank you so much. We appreciate Dr.

Leela Lewis and everything that she is doing for Christ. To hear more episodes don't forget to follow us on iTunes or go to gycweb.org slash beyond to find out more. You

Back to Menu

Series

GYC Beyond

15 - How to Get Involved in Medical Missionary Work

Description

Parent Series

Sponsor

Recorded

Other Teachings in Series

01- Incorporating Evangelism into Your Life

02- How to Live a Consecrated Life

03- How to Navigate Past Brick Walls

04- Leadership and Time Management

05 - How to Have a Powerful Life of Prayer

06 - How to Have a Vibrant Devotional Life

1 more

07- How to Teach an Interesting Sabbath School Lesson

1 more

08 - Discovering Our Christian Heritage

09 - Why Christianity?

10- Why You Should Be Involved in Your Local Church

11- How to Experience Revival and Reformation

12- How to Reach Out to Refugees and Immigrants

13- How to Use Media and Art for God

14 - The Power of Sharing Your Faith

15 - How to Get Involved in Medical Missionary Work

16 - Why You Should Volunteer for GYC

17 - How to Overcome Temptation

18 - The Heart of Ministry

19 - How to Overcome an Ice Cream Addiction

20 - How to be a Part of Total Member Involvement

21 - How to Create a Social Media Ministry

22 - Coming Out Ministries: Sexual Identity & Adventism

3 more

23 - How to Live Dangerously for God

Sound Doctrine