DOCS for Hope

Our story:

Our group began as 6 first year family medicine residents who shared a common goal - to both serve on the mission field in developing nations and practice broad spectrum family medicine in the United States. After completing a Family Medicine residency which focused on Family Medicine with Obstetrics (including operative obstetrics), our physicians sensed a need to further expand the skill set of primary care physicians. With this desire, we created a year of medical fellowship training which included intense training in Tropical Medicine (including HIV/AIDS), Trauma, Orthopedics, Dentistry, Burn care, Anesthesia, and General Surgery. Our experiences gained during this year of fellowship training will forever shape our lives. This legacy lives on today in the Via Christi International Family Medicine Fellowship, which continues prepare family medicine doctors for service in the world’s toughest places.

Our unique practice allows our physicians to serve in developing nations 3 months of the year, while still maintaining and serving our rural community during the remainder of the year on a “mission rotation” schedule.

The first season of blended rural practice and missions medicine was a great success in terms of integration of our families into New Hampton, Iowa, the small community which we now call home. We continue to build relationships in our town which grow deeper as time passes by.

After much prayer and searching, God provided a location where we can invest our lives long term, while at the same time providing service to our current rural Iowa community. This location is Canilla, Guatemala. We have joined with Adonai International Ministries to begin the process of building and starting a hospital. Construction began in January 2015 and continues to progress well. God continues to provide the blessing of financial support through generous donors over the past few years.

Almost one million Mayan Guatemalans live in the mountains surrounding Canillá, Guatemala. The Mayan patient population we serve is currently without adequate healthcare, education, opportunity, and hope. This new hospital will provide inpatient services for children and adults, obstetric care including C-sections, and eventually low risk surgeries. This is in addition to the outpatient services that are already available and that will be expanded. The hospital will slowly begin to open for further care throughout the year 2017.