Louisville Conference

Last weekend, we had the pleasure of attending the Global Missions Health Conference in Louisville, KY. Some of you may recall that this conference changed our lives four years ago in 2003, since it is the site where we first met each other while Eric was in med school in Michigan and Rachel in California. Here's a picture of us in the very room where we first met each other, after a breakout session entitled "The Myths of Biomedicine and the Wisdom of Middle Earth". I'm not kidding. What a beginning!

Well, this time around, this conference may have been only slightly less life-changing. For the last couple months, a couple of our physician family friends and ourselves have been wondering whether we are called to pursue some kind of joint community activity within the world of developing world medical missions. We are all finishing residency training the same year in different specialities and coming from the same church in the Ann Arbor area. We decided to all meet in Louisville to spend some concentrated time praying and talking with each other as well as a number of agencies that work in mission hospitals. Long story short, we are now in the early stages of perhaps working long-term in southern Sudan after a couple years of extra training, likely in Kenya. It's quite a whirlwind just to be considering all this, but extremely exciting at the same time. Here's a picture of all of us (our good friend Carlan, in the center crouched down, also joined us for the conference).