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OUR MISSION IS TO TRAIN AND SERVE
Luke Medical Foundation was established in 1988 as a Christian Ministry to provide scholarships for the training of doctors, nurses, and public health workers to help people like Pablo and his family. The need for Christian doctors and other health care workers in poverty stricken areas was well known and the world was witnessing almost daily the pictures of diseased and starving people.
Jesus changed many lives and drew men to Him through healing. We believe that medical missions are an important opportunity for sharing Christ's love with people. It is our goal to meet the spiritual, physical, and emotional needs of persons who are often neglected because of poverty and circumstances outside of their control.
The purpose of the Luke Medical Foundation is to share the gospel of Jesus Christ in underprivileged areas of the world through medical missionary service.
In 1987 John Yates, the co-founder and director of Discovery Expeditions, and James Farrington, a mountaineering instructor, began talking and praying as they hiked through the Sierra Nevada mountains above Grass Valley, California, about how God might use them in the future. Both men were Emergency Medical Technicians with interest in world missions. They agreed to pray for each other concerning where God might want to use them in the future and whether they should pursue medical school. They decided not to tell anyone else about what they were praying for so as not to call into question their good judgment and sanity. However, during the course of several months, friends, elders, pastors, and John's wife Janet all confirmed to James and John that they would need to consider seriously the possibility that God really did want them to become medical missionaries. Many of these people expressed to them, seemingly out of the blue words such as, "I really can't explain this, but I feel that God wants me to share this thought with you," followed by some reason why the two of them should become doctors. It wasn't long before they got back together and decided that God was probably trying to tell them something.
After much prayer and preparation they decided to study medicine in Mexico where they could learn a new language and culture as well as be involved in medical service as they studied. They chose to attend the University of Montemorelos in Nuevo Leon, Mexico, because of its history in medical missions training and its exchange program of teachers from Loma Linda University.
THE FOUNDING DIRECTORS
Jeff Stout, Chris Claydon, and Scott Kellermann, all doctors in the Grass Valley area had been dreaming and planning for many years, along with their wives, to establish a medical mission outreach of some kind. Jeff and Chris were graduates of schools in Mexico and Scott had been a missionary in Nepal. In 1987, along with Mike Petrillo, a Marriage Family and Child Counselor from Christian Encounter Ranch, they decided to form a medical ministry that would have as its primary purpose the training of medical missionaries. They selected John Yates and James Farrington as the first scholarship students and were incorporated that next year as the Luke Medical Foundation.
GROWING WORLD VIEW AND MISSION
Luke Medical Foundation has a growing international perspective though the majority of its ministry has been with our neighbors in Mexico. Over the years LMF has aided Christian medical students from Brazil, Jamaica, Peru, Trinidad, Mexico, and the United States. Recently one of our founding board members, Dr. Jeff Stout, along with his wife Linda and their three children, left for Papau, New Guinea where they will be operating a medical clinic for Wycliff Bible Translators. Jeff will be recruiting new students for LMF to support in that South Pacific region. Dr. Scott Kellermann, another LMF board member, is involved in short term medical mission projects including the establishment of a clinic in Brazil.