History
“What can I do for Christ and how am I going to be able to make a change?”
Planned giving is such a simple way to assure that Mission Doctors will have the funds to continue their mission of recruiting, training, and supporting doctors in the future.
Our story with Mission Doctors began in 1959. Loretta and I with our fifth child due any time, sat in the dusk one evening to talk about our future. I said, “Since we are going to move, what would you think about a really big move and looking for some overseas missionary work?” She answered, “Dick, I have always wanted to do missionary work, but I thought you were too practical.”
We found an ad for Mission Doctors Association in an issue of The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), called MDA, I flew to Los Angeles for an interview shortly after the birth of Paul, eight weeks later we were in LA attending MDA classes and in July 1960 we landed in Rhodesia. It not only changed our lives, but I would like to think that it changed the lives of thousands of people we came in contact with, especially the local peasant farmers surrounding our mission.
We did a mass measles immunization campaign and then started mobile under-fives and prenatal clinics throughout the District. We were at the forefront of preventive medicine in Rhodesia. After 26 years in the U.S., we returned to the same country now independent Zimbabwe, a different hospital but still out in the bush. Now the problem was AIDS, and initially there was nothing to do about it except watch people die since we had no treatment. Through many aid associations and the UN AIDS fund, we began treating AIDS patients, educating the population, and over many years had a dramatic influence on the incidence of AIDS in the District, with over 2000 people moving from certain death to full health as long as they remained on treatment.
And it is so easy. When you visit your estate planner, ask him/her what you have to do to make sure that some percentage of your estate goes to MDA after you have taken care of your family. You may consider doing what Loretta and I have done. On our IRA, we just logged in at the “beneficiaries” section. Here you can make your spouse your primary beneficiary and then under “secondary beneficiary” put Mission Doctors Association, SSN/TIN #956110132, and indicate the percentage of the fund you want to go to MDA.
So simple and yet so effective and so important. Please give this your full attention now for the future of MDA. Our future gifts will be a blessing for so many!
