Owner, Abraham Family & Geriatric Medicine; and Associate Clinical Professor, Georgia Campus – PCOM, Snellville, Georgia
[as told to David McKay Wilson]
“Since the 1990s, I’ve led medical mission trips to remote places where health care
is lacking—to Africa, South America, China, Eastern Europe and Russia. I feel that
God has given me the ability to practice medicine, and I genuinely believe in helping
others. My osteopathic training, paired with my seminary studies, encourages me to
embrace the needs of both the body and of the spirit. . . . Nine years ago, I took
my daughter and her husband to Jakarta, Indonesia. There we visited my father’s church,
which he established in our home when I was growing up. Christians are very much a
minority in Indonesia; my daughter and I were in awe about how the little church collaborated
with other church branches throughout the country. I was inspired by the ministry;
I told the pastors I wanted to work with them. . . . My father, one of 11 children,
was orphaned as a young boy. Stories of his early hardships influenced me to start
a nonprofit, the 127 Legacy Foundation, whose purpose is to care for widows and orphans
across Indonesia. Since our foundation began in 2014, it has supported two orphanages
and has spared many from lives of homelessness, poverty, neglect and abuse. Three
years ago, four acres of land next to our orphanage in Kupang came up for sale. The
foundation bought it for $15,000, with the plan of building a health clinic in this
underserved region of 400,000. . . . Just this June, I traveled to Kupang to witness
the opening of the 4,000-square-foot facility. It is staffed by personnel from a Baptist
hospital in Java; the hospital supports a doctor and dentist at the clinic. I never
thought the clinic would come to fruition, but it did with the dedicated support,
resources and prayers of so many people. The World Health Organization has recommended
that a hospital be built in the region; our second planned phase will be a 10-bed
mini-hospital, which will cost about $300,000. But we need to hold off on that until
we get the clinic fully off the ground.”
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