Three days, 300 patients! What an experience! We have concluded a series of health fairs here in Dalton, Georgia.

Invited by the parent’s organizations of Northwest Whitfield High School and Southeast High School, our wonderful crew of volunteers transformed a cafeteria and an auditorium into a lab to check sugars, an eye exam lane to see who needs glasses, a theater to show educational movies, a nurses’ station to check blood pressure, and a doctor’s exam room to deal with problems. Our patients were mostly the parents of students from the schools, almost uniformly without medical insurance and access to affordable health care.

Doing health screening, advice and the occasional prescription might be justification for all the effort. But our attendees received more, word of a church that cares for them, and where they can hear the good news of Christ.

We have received over a hundred requests for house call medical care through Grace Medical Outreach. We’ll be working in the next few weeks to follow up on a number of sick patients found at the health fairs, and to answer both medical and spiritual needs as we make home visits. We hope to conduct health fairs twice yearly as the Lord brings us volunteers.

We’re making headway organizationally—a board of directors, a budget, incorporation as a non-profit, an application submitted for 501(c)(3) status. Thanks to our volunteer leadership and lawyer that have made these necessities flow.

In September, I had a sweet reunion with old friends at the Christian Clinic in Belgorod, Ukraine. This clinic, founded soon after the fall of communism in Ukraine, has been used by the Lord to start a church and to minister compassionate medical care in a spiritual desert. My job was to advise the Ukrainian leadership on possible ways to expand their ministry.

Meantime, we prepare for overseas medical teams. Lord willing, I’ll join a MTW team going to Myanmar in January. A medical team from Concord Presbyterian in Gulf Breeze, Florida would like me to help them with a trip this coming summer, most likely to Latin America. If you’re interested in joining an overseas team, please contact me.

Please take a tour of our new web site: www.gracedalton.org/medical. [Editor’s note: the original URL (link) referenced is no longer valid, so the link has been removed.]

I’ve also started a “blog,” which is a collection of essays. It’s called the Doc’s Black Bag. The goal is to explore the borders between medicine, missions, faith and culture. The address is www.blackbagmedical.blogspot.com. Chattanooga’s newspaper recently carried an article about the ministry. See it at http://www.timesfreepress.com/news/2009/nov/09/ministry-reaches-uninsured/.

Are you a person of prayer? Pray for Grace Medical Outreach. The doors we want to enter are wide open… homes where the message of Christ and compassionate medical care are invited. Countries where medical teams can make an eternal difference. Pray that we will have the ability and wisdom to take advantage of all the opportunities.
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Dr. Wiley Smith
(Former Medical Director at the Presbyterian Medical Clinic of Belize)