The Story of our Health Message

A Testimony From Mrs. White

One of the purposes of the meeting at which this message was read was to enable the joint committee, who had in charge the direction and training of medical missionaries, to meet the medical students who had been pursuing their studies at the sanitarium and at the state university, and to learn of their progress and their interest in the work. The attitude of these young men and women was gratifying indeed. With augmented confidence the physicians and leaders bade them Godspeed as they returned for their second year of training at Ann Arbor. SHM 273.6

Even while the report of this inspiring meeting was being read by the subscribers to Medical Missionary, there was a letter on its way from Australia, in which Mrs. White set forth more forcefully than ever before the benefits of a medical training as a physician or a nurse in winning the hearts of the sick to Christ. SHM 274.1

“I am deeply interested in the subject of medical missionary work,” she wrote, “and the education of men and women for that work. I could wish that there were one hundred nurses in training where there is one. It ought to be thus. Both men and women can be so much more useful as medical missionaries than as missionaries without the medical education. I am more and more impressed with the fact that a more decided testimony must be borne upon this subject. ... SHM 274.2

“I have been surprised at being asked by physicians if I did not think it would be more pleasing to God for them to give up their medical practice and enter the ministry. I am prepared to answer such an inquirer: If you are a Christian and a competent physician, you are qualified to do tenfold more good as a missionary for God than if you were to go forth merely as a preacher of the Word. ... SHM 274.3

“In almost every church there are young men and women who might receive education either as nurses or physicians. They will never have a more favorable opportunity than now. I would urge that this subject be considered prayerfully, that special effort be made to select those youth who give promise of usefulness and moral strength.”— The Medical Missionary, November and December, 1892. Reprinted in Counsels on Health, 503-507. SHM 274.4