Q: My spouse and I are both medical spouses. How could we share medical ministry and family roles?

answer this question

A: Let your spouse flow in his/her gifts.

Answer from Harold Adolph, MD who served in three Ethiopian hospitals over 30 years performing more than 25,000 operations.
Usually the wife is best with the care of the children and managing the home. Sharing night call and emergencies is helpful. Letting each other do the things that they may be most gifted is good. Perhaps the wife likes children care and obstetrics and the husband likes trauma care and surgery.

A: Find the right agency.

Answer from Cynthia Hale, MD, MPH. Cynthia and her physician husband Tom served in Nepal under the United Mission to Nepal. For their first 12 years in Nepal they served in a remote rural mission hospital where Tom served as both surgeon and medical director and Cynthia served as pediatrician and family physician.
You need to join a mission that will give both of you latitude to share your medical ministry and family roles. One such mission is Interserve.

Through the mission agency, or through other experienced medical missionaries, you can get lots of tips and support. Such a partnership is
exciting and rewarding.

A: By communication and prayer.

Answer from Candi, an RN with Mercy Ships who has been in missions for four years.
Sharing ministry and family roles can be extremely challenging. We often call it character building! My husband, Greg and I, are both nurses with a heart to serve. I think most couples that are medical professionals struggle with family and career. We have found that juggling family and medical missions is not any different. The biggest difference, which is a positive one, is that we can include our family in the ministry. We can take our daughters on mission trips, and enhance their education profusely. What a family gains working for God is the opportunity to see life outside the box and grow with the calling. They see physical and spiritual poverty and need. Using medicine is a mighty tool to accomplish God’s work; healing and compassion go hand in hand with showing Christ’s love.

We have discovered with prayer that we can work together in medical missions. By complementing each others gifts, we can accomplish the vision that God has given us. Greg is the conceptual idea man, and I am the relational component. How does it happen? Working together, making lists, communicating well, respecting space, and giving it to God. We include our daughters in our prayer needs and ministry, and by them seeing our hearts they grow spiritually. At the end of the day, we try to go home, spend quality family time together and keep our priorities straight.

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