Financial Support Recieved

Hello!! I just wanted to give an update how we are doing this week. We are in the Great Lenten Fast and are blessed to be able to attend evening services at our church. It is a time of prayer and diligence. We welcome the time of reflection.

We received our monthly statement from World Medical Mission of financial supporters. We are so thankful to our friends and family that have been able to give. We appreciate your gift and kindness. It is encouraging to us to know that we are continuing on the path that we believe Christ has set us on.

Please keep us in your prayers. We have many, many, many decisions to make. Below is a copy of the letter that was mailed out to all of those that we had the address for. I know there are more of you that did not receive this letter. Thank you for your time, words of encouragement and support. I pray you have a blessed day.

Ashley, Chris and Family
"The Will of God will not take you where the Grace of God cannot protect you."
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Greetings Friends and Family!

It is with great joy that we enter 2016 as we have many exciting things to share with you about what the Lord has been doing in our lives. I will be taking my family medicine board exams and finishing my residency program in June. As this chapter comes to a close we will be transitioning to a new adventure!

As many of you know Ashley and I felt called by God back in 2004 to begin preparing for medical missionary service. So over the last 12 years we have been training and working in the medical field preparing to fulfill this calling to serve God as medical missionaries. Ashley has completed her training as a licensed practical nurse and served in a variety of settings including pediatric, kidney and infectious disease clinics and I am now a family physician (soon will be board certified) with a broad-scope of training in obstetrics, pediatrics, emergency care, and general medicine with several international experiences that have provided us the valuable skills we will need to serve God through medicine.

We have been accepted by World Medical Mission (WMM), the medical division of Samaritan’s Purse (SP), to participate in the Post-Residency Program (PRP), a program for doctors who are just completing their residency training program and have been called to full time overseas medical mission work. WMM/SP have seen how effective mission hospitals around the world have been in reaching people for Christ. These hospitals are centered on doctors who have dedicated their lives to full time Christian medical mission service. Over the last several years they noticed a problem developing in the mission hospitals, there are fewer and fewer doctors committing to full time service and hospitals around the world have had to close their doors. They found that many young doctors had intentions of going overseas to serve in a mission hospital but have to stay to work and pay off loans before they go and many circumstances prevent them from ever committing to full-time service. So the goal of the PRP is to bridge the gap between residency training and full-time missionary service. WMM will send us to work with an experienced missionary physician at one of several mission hospitals in need that they have partnered with for a two-year term.

We have officially been accepted to come to Mbingo Hospital near Bamenda, Cameroon in Africa. We will be working with Dennis Palmer and his wife Nancy who have spent nearly 35 years there building an academic medical mission training center. It is a 330-bed hospital with a full laboratory, an ICU, a full time pathologist, and high quality internal medicine and surgery residency programs. This is a rare mission hospital. Their hope for us is to consider starting a family medicine training program to take over the obstetrics and ambulatory care services of the hospital. We plan to leave in during the month of November, 2016.

As part of our preparations we have to build a team of partners. We are asking you to become our partner by committing to pray for us regularly. Right now we need prayer support to raise up a team of lifelong supporters, to make good and wise decisions about our belongings (house, cars, and literally everything we own), about what curriculum to use as we learn about home-schooling our children, whether we need to learn French, that our objectives for the next 2 years will become clear and focused, and that God will open doors for us to share the work he is doing through our ministry.

We also ask you to prayerfully consider becoming a financial supporter. WMM will provide us with a modest stipend and financial support for housing, food, and my airfare. However, this will leave a shortfall of nearly $5800/month to pay for our VISA’s, passports, travel expenses, and vaccinations for Ashley and the kids, home schooling curriculum, insurance (health, life, emergency evacuation, and malpractice), maintenance of all our certifications and licenses, and some sort of transportation when we get there. Apparently it costs between $90, 000-100,000 to keep missionary families on the field. We believe we can do it for less. We are asking you to commit to giving $25, $50, $100 or more monthly or giving gifts annually of $100, $250, $1000 or more.The donations are tax deductible and 100% of the funds you donate will be held in an escrow account by WMM/SP for our exclusive use. They do not keep any administration fee. The remaining money not used during the PRP will be transferred to the mission agency we transition to at the end of the two years. Our prayer and hope along with that of WMM is that we will be able to continue full time medical mission work when the two years is complete. In order for this to happen we are asking you to join with us now in service to the Lord. Please let us know how you would like to partner with us. There are two ways to give tax-deductible gifts. Fill out the enclosed form and mail it in to the address on it with a credit card or check made payable to Samaritan’s Purse with Chris and Ashley Gifford in the memo or you can go to www.samaritanspurse.org, select World Medical Mission under the WHAT WE DO tab, then select Support a Missionary, then type in Chris or Ashley Gifford and pay online through their secure website. We are really grateful for this opportunity in our career and are excited to see how God uses us all to further His Kingdom through this ministry!

We have a blog at careinthevalley.blogspot.org where you can follow our journey and/or an email emergent2016@gmail.com where you can contact us about how you want to be involved. Please write and give us your email or mailing address to receive our quarterly newsletters. We are developing a schedule to be able to come and talk to churches about our work and would like to meet with you to discuss this opportunity for you to serve with us in Cameroon. Let us know if your church would like for us to come and share!

May God Continue to Bless You and Keep You,

The Gifford’s

Chris, Ashley, Micah, & Micaja