Team Soddo - Past, Present, & Future
How it all started…
I knew I wanted to be a doctor since I was 9 years old. Growing up in Indonesia and seeing the significant disparity in the healthcare system and considerable challenges in access to care, I felt strongly that I wanted to practice medicine in an underserved part of the world. This dream was reaffirmed in 2007 when I spent the summer volunteering at a hospital in the Democratic Republic of Congo. From there, I completed medical school, surgical residency, and a critical care fellowship. I have spent the past five years growing my skills as a trauma/critical care surgeon in Myrtle Beach. However, that strong desire to serve in an underserved area of the world has not gone away.
This desire came to a head and pushed Luis and me to sign up for the Global Missions Health Conference in November 2022. We did not know exactly what we would learn from this conference, but we went with hopeful anticipation. We attended the first session and listened as a Kenyan physician shared about the exciting things that she was a part of in her nation. At the first break, we proceeded over to the exhibit hall. I had marked the specific exhibits I wanted to check out. As we walked in, the very first booth was Soddo Christian Hospital. I had never heard of it and wasn’t planning to stop and find out.
However, Luis felt very strongly that we needed to speak with the people at this particular booth. When we walked up to them, all the people manning the booth were engaged with others in conversation. I was ready to continue to the next booth that was on my list, but Luis was adamant that we should wait and hear what they had to say. Slightly annoyed and impatient, I decided to wait until a man name Ken came up and talked to us. As he talked about SCH, everything he said about the facility ticked off items on our mental checklist, including bonus items we did not even consider. Luis very quickly knew that this was the facility we were being called to partner with to serve the people of Ethiopia.
I, on the other hand, took a little longer to convince. Over the next few months, I looked at several other facilities across the African continent associated with PAACS (Pan-African Academy of Christian Surgeons). On March 7, I was woken in the middle of the night, so I decided to peruse the Soddo Christian Hospital Facebook page. I found the post from the day of the conference (see above). I saw the picture that includes the back of Luis and me and it just struck me…we are the future members of team Soddo.
If you would like to learn more about how you can help us on this journey, please click the link below!
