International Rotation/Medical Missions Trip

Here's the scoop (also on our wedding website): We have officially been accepted to go with INMED (Institute for International Medicine) to go to Soddo Christian Hospital next July! We will arrive on 7/1/10 and leave on 7/31/10. We'll both we participating in medical education at the hospital with Ethiopian students and doctors-- this is part of my 4th year clinical medicine curriculum and an additional learning experience for Maggie in nursing practicum and public health. We will learn more in the days to come about more specifics, but we will also be blogging about our experiences!

For those of you curious, I will be academically attached to Dr. Ruth Droppers (http://www.soddo.org/ruthdroppers.asp), a Netherlands-trained internist who has some additional training in geriatrics but usually serves as a general practitioner in both inpatient and outpatient settings. I will be working direct supervision of her and the other physicians there (American, British, and Ethiopian.) My expected clinical responsibilities will be 45% inpatient hospital care, 45% outpatient visits, and 10% operating room. Portions of the inpatient time will most likely involve being on the obstetrical ward. There will be call responsibilities, as well as an online course in international medicine to complete before I start the rotation and several presentations on various medical topics to the house staff while there.

We would really appreciate your prayers for us for the wedding & marriage, but please keep following up to pray for our service in Ethiopia! We are very excited about this opportunity to learn and prepare for a lifetime providing medical care in underserved areas. As part of our wedding registry, we are also raising funds for this trip, and you can contribute in three different ways:


1. Go to http://inmed.us/donate/student_scholarships.asp and make an online designation (tax-deductible.) You can also go to this website to print out a downloadable form to make a donation by check.

2. Talk to Matthew or Maggie to get a mailable form to designate your gift so that it can be tax-deductible.

3. Send a check directly to us at 1819 Presstman Street, Baltimore, MD 21217 and just write "missions trip" in the memo line so we'll know.


Thanks so much and God bless! Feel free to contact us if you have any questions.

what used to be my favorite songs

While unpacking a box from my parents' house (hooray for having enough room in the new house for all my stuff!), I found a mix CD from when I was 14 or 15 containing "my favorite songs." They are, in order that they were found on the CD:

With Arms Wide Open- Creed
Deeper- Delirious?
My Friend (So Long)- dc Talk
I Could Sing of Your Love Forever- Delirious?
Sick Cycle Carousel- Lifehouse
My Own Prison- Creed
River Constantine- Jars of Clay
Grace- Jars of Clay
Alive- P.O.D.
Joy- Tree63
Unfazed- The Waiting
No One Loves Me Like You- Jars of Clay
A Million Lights- Tree 63

my very first show!

I am opening for (and helping to play a few songs for) the band moron at Maple View Baptist Church on Friday, October 23rd. It's a benefit concert for Harford County Right to Life, which is a pretty cool organization helping women & children in Harford County. I have shared my thoughts before about the weaknesses of the pro-life movement, but I am still very glad to support this cause with the extra three or so people that will come to hear me play.

More information here.

Also, if you have requests or a good idea for a setlist, I'll consider them. For now, possibilities include (but are not limited to):

emerald eyes

the botanist

July 14th, 2006 (kofi's song)

[cross-posted on facebook]

top 6 words that i have learned in the last year, mostly in medical school

1. Marsupialize-- To create a pouch and then have something slip inside that pouch (apparently intestine can do this to themselves.)

2. Invaginate-- To fold in such a way that an outer surface becomes an inner one.

3. Pedunculated-- Having, growing on, or being attached by a peduncle.

4. Pendulous-- Suspended as to swing freely.

5. Tumescent-- To be swollen or engorged.

6. Evancalous-- Pleasant to embrace.

honorable mentions that are not words but made up of them nonetheless:

I. The Mongolian Epileptic Gerbil, which is incidentally an awesome band name.

II. The Throckmorton Sign, which a real live radiologist told me about.

pacifism by default?

I have been wondering a fair amount lately about the sanctity of human life and war. I am totally okay with killing the guilty-- God tells us that it's okay in Genesis 9 and then clarifies that the government has that power nowadays in Romans 13, and I don't feel like that needs to be any more complicated (though I am sure that some of my readers will disagree with me there.) However, the difficulty comes in considering the question of war because in nearly every war ever fought, innocent civilians die. Perhaps they are supporting the military, or perhaps not. If one nation is justified in going to war against another, perhaps the civilians on the immoral side are participating in something immoral and perhaps they are not. I don't think that's particularly relevant. The traditional position of most Christians seems to be that war and the death of civilians therein is justified because of some combination of "the-ends-justify-the-means" and the fact that civilians often die "unintentionally" in the pursuit of the higher cause. This latter fact is, I must admit, practiced admirably by most Western nations nowadays and is flagrantly violated by most of their enemies.

However, I would argue that this still doesn't really cut the mustard. I think it is clear in the Bible that God is meant to decide who lives and who dies, and He specifically extends that authority to humans on a very limited basis, and even then only specific people may die as the result of God-given human force. In every case, these are people determined by God to be guilty before Him. In the OT, this involved the nations around Israel who had been found wanting in their worship of idols; war against them by Israel was then a particular aspect of God's judgment against them and righteous solely because of God's command. In the NT, we see that the power of the state has been diminished only to "punish the guilty" when it comes to the use of the sword. Thus, there is absolutely no positive command in either the NT or the OT that allows for the killing of innocent people, in war or elsewhere.

What about the negative commands? Well, I don't think you have to look far for that. In the Ten Commandments, God tells us that murder is a sin against Him, and while there is certainly ample Biblical evidence that not all killing is murder, there is simply none that the death of an innocent falls into this category. We must also reckon with Jesus' words to us to love our enemies and not to return evil for evil. While I think that this does not entirely apply to nation-states, I think that this very clear command cannot be ignored except to our moral peril. We cannot evade the words of God with worldly wisdom that seeks to justify the actions taken for our safety or even for the ostensible safety of others.

It may seem tempting to say that it is "loving" to kill others that we might save more, but isn't this the same logic that applies to stem-cell research? God has never given the state the power to kill anyone but those who have already proved themselves guilty, and we should not presume to say otherwise.

This is has been batting around in my head for a while, and I wanted this post to be shorter in order to more adequately spark discussion, but I wanted to explain the reasoning that I run up against. Thoughts? Specific Biblical passages would be very helpful.

a kick in the pants

“Our young men are going into the professional fields because they don’t ‘feel called’ to the mission field. We don’t need a call; we need a kick in the pants.

We must begin thinking in terms of ‘going out,’ and stop our weeping because ‘they won’t come in.’ Who wants to step into an igloo? The tombs themselves are not colder than the churches. May God send us forth.”

-Jim Elliot, in Elisabeth Elliot, Shadow of the Almighty: The Life and Testament of Jim Elliot (New York: Harper, 1958), 54.

how do you love God in abundance?

much is written about how to live & worship God through earthly suffering, as it is obviously a difficult road to walk. And many lies have been told about how to obey God in order to achieve earthly comfort, security, and abundance (none of which the Bible values very highly.) But when your life is filled up with blessings, how should we then live?

[cross-posted on facebook]