Not by might, not by power, but by Spirit says the Lord." Zechariah 4:6
Daniel Fountain, MD April 22, 1930 - February 12, 2013
MedSend Co-Founder is with the Lord
“I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?”John 11:25-26
With heavy hearts we report the death of MedSend co-founder Daniel Fountain, MD, on February 12, 2013, after a long illness. Dr. Fountain was a general surgeon who had a distinguished career as a medical missionary, health development expert, author and educator. He and his wife Miriam, a nurse, served at Vanga Hospital in Democratic Republic of Congo from 1960 to 1996. In 1992, Dr. Fountain co-founded MedSend with Dr. David Topazian to help alleviate the critical shortage of healthcare professionals on the mission field. Until his death at age 82, Dr. Fountain was a devoted and tireless supporter of MedSend, serving on the board of directors and as executive vice president, as well as developing and conducting specialized training programs for MedSend grant recipients and other healthcare missionaries.
After the death of his beloved Miriam in March 2011, Dr. Fountain wrote: “Last Sunday morning, Miriam’s first Sunday in heaven, as the organ played ‘Holy, Holy, Holy,’ my spirit could see her dressed in white, waving a purple banner, and dancing with holy grace amongst the millions of others singing ‘Holy, Holy, Holy’ in the language of heaven. So I must keep practicing my singing and my serving now, so that I will be prepared to join the eternal chorus and, with her, give praise to the Lord who made us and loves us.”
Dr. Fountain is now singing in that eternal chorus! Please join us in praying for his family and friends as they mourn his loss and in thanking God for the life of this remarkable servant.
Dr. Bill Allen inspired the crowd.
Atlanta Breakfast Waking up with MedSend & Chick-fil-A
On September 13, about 35 Atlanta area MedSend friends were up with the chickens – well Chick-fil-A that is – to hear inspiring messages from MedSend physician Dr. Bill Allen and Chick-fil-A Vice President of Field Operations Cliff Robinson. Over a delicious breakfast, participants learned how Dr. Allen gave up a lucrative private practice in the U.S. to spend six years delivering compassionate healthcare to the underserved people of Peru. They also heard Mr. Robinson speak about how to lead with uncompromising faith in the workplace. For more information on hosting a MedSend fundraising dinner or dessert in your area, please contact Ilona at ilona@medsend.org.
Your shopping can make a difference
GoodShop is a program that will donate a percentage of your online purchases at over 2,400 popular retailers to the charity of your choice. Just go to GoodSearch.com to find out more and select MedSend as your favorite charity. You might also want to look into adding the GoodSearch toolbar to your browser so that MedSend will receive a donation every time you make a web search. There is also a program for dining out.
News Items
MedSend Announces Changes to the Development Team
Stratford, CT – April 23, 2012 – MedSend announced the addition of Monique Wherry & Judy Heaton to the Development Team, as National Donor Relations Manager, and Northwest Donor Relations Representative, respectively.
Monique's experience in generating revenue and increasing support bases for educational and non-profit organizations spans 15 years, during which she has served as a development professional for organizations such as Heifer International, United Negro College Fund and Care USA. Monique resides in the Atlanta, Georgia, area and holds a B.A. in history from Paine College and an M.A. in history from Arkansas State University. She is a member of the Association of Fundraising Professionals.
Judy is a homemaker who lives in the Spokane, Washington, area and serves God full-time through a number of dynamic ministries, including sports and knitting outreach groups – and MedSend. Judy and her husband are also involved in short-term medical missions and serve on a board that ships medical equipment to Madagascar.
Monique and Judy are welcomed additions to the development team, which is run by Chief Development Officer Sheldon “Shelly” Wermes.
MedSend Announces Changes to the Board of Directors
Stratford, CT – April 23, 2012 – MedSend announced that the Board of Directors approved the appointment of Dr. Douglas A. Drevets as the new Chairman of the Board. Dr. Drevets succeeds Dr. Charles Kelley, who served as Chairman from 2005 to 2011. Prior to being Chairman, Dr. Drevets served as a member of the MedSend board from 1999-2006 and from 2008 to present.
Dr. Drevets is Professor and Chief of Infectious Diseases at the Oklahoma University Health Sciences Center in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. He is involved in biomedical research, education, and clinical care of patients including those with HIV/AIDS. He is active locally in Young Life and has participated in several short-term mission trips.
“Doug has a great understanding of medical missions, and the importance of Christian doctors serving needy people around the world.” said MedSend President, Rick Allen. “We are excited for his contribution as Chairman of the Board, and we ask God to provide him with wisdom and guidance.”
Outgoing Chairman, Dr. Charles “Charlie” Kelley, is Associate Professor Emeritus of Medicine, Indiana University, School of Medicine. Dr. Kelley serves on the board of the Indiana University-Moi University Consortium. He is a past trustee for the Christian Medical & Dental Associations and is on the board of MAP International. A member of MedSend’s inaugural board of directors, Dr. Kelley served from 1994-2002, and again from 2004-2011, serving as Chairman from 2005-2011.
“Over the last six years, the U.S. economy was hit with unprecedented challenges,” Allen said. "As Chairman, Dr. Kelley steered MedSend through these difficult times, and we praise God for his commitment to MedSend.”
May Events
Stratford, CT. (April 16, 2012). MedSend Development announces 2 upcoming events in May 2012:
May 9th in San Antonio, TX / May 10th in Moscow, ID.
Fairfield, CT. (March 7, 2012). MedSend celebrates 20 years of ministry and honors founding partner Dr. Dave Topazian at Black Rock Congregational Church in Fairfield, CT. This video was presented at the event, which was BRCC's annual Missions Conference.
Stratford, CT. (February 3, 2012). MedSend launches Prayer Team 20, a special initiative to pray for the Lord to continue to guide and bless MedSend through the 20th year. Through weekly emails, MedSend invites supporters to seek God’s will for this ministry.
Stratford, CT. (January 25, 2012). As a part of MedSend's 20th anniversary, an anonymous donor has made it possible for MedSend President Rick Allen, along with a videographer, to visit grant recipients on a two-week trip to Africa.
The goal is to capture on video how the Lord is working through MedSend grant recipients to enable global healthcare missions.
Meet the Class of October 2011
Melanie W.* was serving as a short-term missionary in Kenya when a two-year-old died of malaria because adequate healthcare was not available. During the funeral she felt God call her into healthcare ministry.
“He opened my eyes to how meeting someone’s physical needs via medicine would create opportunities to reach out to them spiritually,” she explains. Within two weeks of returning to the U.S., she enrolled in nursing school.
Today Melanie is one of the 18 healthcare professionals in MedSend’s Class of October 2011 whose grants or renewal grants were recently approved. Like Melanie, all are eager to serve as soon as their grants are funded.
Learn more about this group of committed healthcare professionals and how God called them to serve by clickingHERE.
When Great Commitment Meets Great Need - Amazing Things Happen!
“Thank you Jesus, thank you Jesus,” the elderly women wept as she grasped the Bible Sarah Hollingsworth, RN, MPH, had given her and held it to her heart. While serving in a dental clinic on a short-term mission high in Andes Mountains of Peru, Sarah found many such experiences deeply moving.
Like many of the healthcare professionals recently approved for MedSend grants, Sarah's desire to dedicate her life to serving the poor and medically underserved was confirmed during short-term missions.
“I triaged and discharged each patient who came to the clinic," she recalls. "Some of these people would walk an entire day through the mountains hoping to get care. I performed discharge teaching of proper hygiene, nutritional information, and discussed how to prevent further dental problems. People were all in need yet their hearts were so ready to give to us anything they had.”
Today, Sarah is eager to serve long-term in East Africa. She is one of 16 healthcare professionals who were recently approved for MedSend grants. MedSend is now working to raise funds for the grants.
In East Africa, Sarah will serve in the health center of a program for orphaned and vulnerable children and she will also conduct community health outreaches into surrounding areas.
“I praise the Lord that he has allowed me the privilege of loving and serving the poor, broken, and vulnerable,” she says. “The Lord has broken my heart for the hurting and when I am able to love those whom the world has labeled as ‘unlovable’ my heart comes alive.”
Cristine Masters, MSN, FNP, is another member of the June class who found inspiration during a short-term mission in a Southeast Asian nation. During a follow-up visit for surgery to remove a benign tumor, she asked the patient if she could pray for him. His response was astonishing.
“How do you pray to your God?” he asked. He explained that he had asked Cristine’s God to be his God after waking from surgery. But he did not know how to pray to Him.
“So together in prayer we affirmed his salvation and asked God to reveal more of Himself,” Cristine says. The man was referred to a Christian ministry and later his brother and sister also asked to learn more about the Lord.
When funded, Cristine’s MedSend grant will enable her to serve long-term in this same Southeast Asian nation where the need is so great.
“Over 66% of the population lives on less than $1.25 per day,” she says. “Most have little to no access to medical care and one in five children die before reaching the age of five. The nation is also wrought with physical and spiritual orphans. Further, many children live with a chronically-ill parents and are at high-risk to become victims of abuse and violence.”
Ross McCordic, MD: A Life of Service
With great sadness, we report the death of Ross McCordic, MD, on July 21, 2011. Dr. McCordic and his wife Dawn, a nurse, served as MedSend grant recipients in Chad from August 1997 to September 1999, during which time MedSend paid their educational loans in full. Raised on the mission field in Chad, Dr. McCordic was a Senior Director for TEAM and provided visionary leadership to missionaries in Africa, the Middle East and South Asia. Please join us in praying for God to comfort Dawn and their three sons, Joshua, Kyle and David. Memorial gifts may be directed to the family for a family educational fund; or to TEAM, PO Box 969, Wheaton, IL60187, for the ANNOOR Sanatorium. For more information, click here.
Your Generosity Transformed Lives!
On June 30, 2011, MedSend closed a fiscal year that was a resounding success. To find out how God transformed lives around the world in FY 2010-2011 through your generous support of this ministry, watch MedSend President Rick Allen's video message below. Or click HERE for his written message.
MedSend President Rick Allen: FYE 2011 - Year of Blessing!
Called to Serve: MedSend's Class of March 2011
God’s call to Suja Brane came on a mission trip in the form of an eight-year-old boy named Hugo... MORE.
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Miriam Fountain Memorial Fund: Tribute to a Remarkable Servant
In the dead of night in 1962, a young mother paced the floor of her Congolese bungalow as her ten-month-old son struggled to breathe in her arms. She wished desperately to speak with her husband, a missionary physician, but he was away and she had no way to reach him. As a missionary nurse, she was thankful for the penicillin injection her son had received earlier at the missionary hospital next door. But she also knew that pneumonia still ravaged his small body and his life still hung in the balance. So she paced and prayed and pled with the Lord.
Lifelong passion With the first rays of sunlight, the child seemed to rally and along with relief, a startling idea dawned in Miriam Fountain's soul: there were untold numbers of African mothers in situations like hers – or even worse – but they had nowhere to turn. In that moment, a lifelong passion to provide medical care access to poor and unreached African families was born in her heart. She and her husband Dan would realize that one of the best ways to do this was to train an army of African nurses and so they started a school of nursing at Vanga Hospital.
On March 4, 2011, when Miriam Fountain quietly passed from this life into the next, she left behind a lifetime of remarkable service to the Lord and the African people she loved so much. This love came naturally to the girl who was born in a grass-roofed, mud brick house in the Belgian Congo, where her missionary parents served.
“From her early childhood in the Congo she served Jesus,” her husband Dan said. “As a little girl she shared her doll’s clothes and even her own clothes with the Congolese children around her who needed them more than she did.”
At 12, Miriam came to the U.S. to attend a boarding school for missionary kids. Later, she attended Wheaton College and received a BSN from Columbia University College of Nursing. She and Dan married in 1958 and were appointed career missionaries to the Democratic Republic of Congo or DRC (formerly Zaire) the next year.
Dan and Miriam Fountain in Congo
Life on the field The Fountains served in the DRC from 1960 to 1996. Under Dan’s direction, Vanga Hospital grew into a 400-bed teaching hospital treating nearly 15,000 patients per year, with a nursing school, family medicine residency, 50 rural health centers serving a quarter million people, a church-based community health program serving over 300 villages, and a whole-person care ministry to persons with HIV/AIDS. Miriam was right beside him, balancing being a wife and mother of three children with teaching nursing, managing a pharmacy that served 11 Christian hospitals, doing a daily radio broadcast, and providing hospitality for the many visitors that came to Vanga.
“Our house was a revolving door for visitors, Peace Corps volunteers, government, church and mission leaders, and missionary colleagues,” Dan recalled. “Her sweet and sour pork often had far more pineapple than meat in it, but everyone appreciated the food and warm hospitality.”
It wasn’t easy. Yet the presence of Jesus within Miriam always shone through. She patiently taught nursing students the basics of mathematics and how to be gentle in caring for sick people. She shared Jesus with students and modeled how to give compassionate care to hurting people. She attended births, sharing the new mothers' joy and encouraging them to dedicate their children to the Lord. It is especially fitting that the Vanga Hospital nursing school has been renamed the Miriam Fountain School of Nursing. Jill Lowery, a missionary serving in DRC, remembers the profound impact Miriam had on her life and ministry.
“I was a young mom of 23 years when I arrived in Congo back in 1990. Had Miriam not been there to welcome us and mentor me, our family would never have survived here. Many times over the years I’ve said that if I have any insight concerning how to live and serve in the Congo effectively, it all started with Miriam Fountain. She was such an amazing woman, such a humble servant, steadfast in her love for the Lord, her family and others. As a non-medical person, I can’t comment on the technical aspects of her work, but I can say that Miriam didn’t just treat people. She invested her life in them. The investment is at work even now, producing returns in and through our lives.”
"...Miriam didn’t just treat people. She invested her life in them."
Dan and Miriam
Miriam Fountain Memorial Fund Although the Fountains returned to the U.S. in 1996, their work on behalf of international missions continued. Dan became a co-founder of MedSend and serves on the Board of Directors today. As such, the Fountains have been great friends of MedSend and it is our desire to honor Miriam by creating the Miriam Fountain Memorial Fund.
The Miriam Fountain Memorial Fund will provide MedSend grants that enable the service of nurses who plan to serve in Africa. This corps of nurses will carry on Miriam's dream as they provide compassionate medical care, train African nurses and teach preventive healthcare in African communities. Above all, they will introduce those they serve to Jesus whom Miriam loved so dearly and served so faithfully.
If you wish to participate in creating this Fund, click HERE to make a secure credit card donation. Please be sure to designate "Miriam Fountain Memorial Fund" on the Program Designation pull-down menu. A memorial card will be sent to Dan notifying him of your part in Miriam's memorial (no mention of the gift amount will be made).
Miriam Fountain was a remarkable woman and MedSend, like so many other individuals and institutions, has been blessed by her life. We hope you will join us in paying tribute to this humble servant of our Lord by donating to the Miriam Fountain Memorial Fund.
A Fitting Tribute
Tom Little Memorial Fund
"He died, yet through his faith he is still speaking." Hebrews 11:4
To honor Tim Little and to create a fund that will help send Christian healthcare workers to Asia, MedSend is establishing the Tom Little Memorial Fund. This continual fund will help send committed Christian healthcare professionals to serve in difficult regions for years to come. Their work will eventually touch countless thousands of needy lives.
It's easy and secure to make a Living Memorial Gift using your credit card. Just CLICK HERE and under Program Designation, select Tom Little Memorial Fund. When your gift is received, a memorial card will be sent to Tom's wife Libby notifying her of your thoughtful participation in the memorial (no mention of the amount of the gift will be made.)
Throughout the history of Christianity, the great sacrifices of the few have awakened and kindled the passion of the many. We pray that the ultimate sacrifice of MedSend grant recipient Tom Little and his team will kindle a spreading fire of medical outreach that will transform our hurting world.
A Life of Love
Remembering Tom Little, O.D.
"There is no greater love than to lay down one's life for one's friends." John 15:13
One Saturday morning in August our staff at MedSend was shocked and grieved to receive an email message from Libby Little informing us that her “darling Tom” had been killed, along with nine other members of his medical team. By now, you may have heard of Dr. Tom Little and his colleagues since the story has made headlines around the world. They were executed by the Taliban as they returned from a medical clinic in a remote region of Afghanistan. But you may not have realized that Tom Little was a MedSend grant recipient. We want to share a little about this remarkable man whose recent ministry you, as a MedSend supporter, have helped to make possible. READ MORE
In the dead of night in 1962, a young mother paced the floor of her Congolese bungalow as her ten-month-old son struggled to breathe in her arms. She wished desperately to speak with her husband, a missionary physician, but he was away and she had no way to reach him. As a missionary nurse, she was thankful for the penicillin injection her son had received earlier at the missionary hospital next door. But she also knew that pneumonia still ravaged his small body and his life still hung in the balance. So she paced and prayed and pled with the Lord.
To honor Tim Little and to create a fund that will help send Christian healthcare workers to Asia, MedSend is establishing the Tom Little Memorial Fund. This continual fund will help send committed Christian healthcare professionals to serve in difficult regions for years to come. Their work will eventually touch countless thousands of needy lives.
One Saturday morning in August our staff at MedSend was shocked and grieved to receive an email message from Libby Little informing us that her “darling Tom” had been killed, along with nine other members of his medical team. By now, you may have heard of Dr. Tom Little and his colleagues since the story has made headlines around the world. They were executed by the Taliban as they returned from a medical clinic in a remote region of Afghanistan. But you may not have realized that Tom Little was a MedSend grant recipient. We want to share a little about this remarkable man whose recent ministry you, as a MedSend supporter, have helped to make possible. READ MORE