Charles Woodrow is a doctor and missionary who has spent decades serving in Nampula, Mozambique. In a recent report he told of the value of medical missions and I asked his permission to share it with you. I hope you’ll be encouraged as you read it. You can learn more about Charles and his work here. In former days I loved to operate. I found it immensely satisfying to do a one-hour procedure that relieved someone of a problem that had left him incapacitated, sometimes for decades, because surgical care simply was not available to the vast majority of Mozambicans. But even then, the overwhelming motive in helping needy patients was always evangelism. Marrere was a 150-bed government hospital administered by a communist regime in the first years of our ministry. Nevertheless, I, together with my associates on the surgical team, prayed with every patient in the OR, conducted evangelistic rounds on the ward, handed out gospels of John in the clinic, gave out free gospel tracts to everyone we preached to, sold Bibles from the surgical block, and every Sunday in the main hall of the hospital held evangelistic services which were attended by patients, family members, and staff. For years under communism, the only place in north Mozambique where people could get a Bible was from our operating suite, the precursor of the bookstore we opened 13 years later. No one with the government or hospital ever complained about all the evangelistic work—they were simply glad there was a trained surgeon in the … Continue reading Why Medical Missions Is So Effective