The Christian Medical & Dental Fellowship (CMDF) will be organising its first student missions conference over the upcoming Hari Raya Puasa weekend.

The event, titled “Healthcare in Missions (HIM) Conference 2018”, aims to educate healthcare students and graduates about what it takes to be a missionary, as well as introduce participants to the various missions programmes they can get involved in.

Some of the speakers who will be sharing about their experience serving others include Dr Goh Wei Leong, the chairman and co-founder of Healthserve, and Dr Lim Poh Lian, an infectious disease doctor and head of the Travellers’ Health & Vaccination Clinic at Tan Tock Seng Hospital. They will be talking about the realities and challenges of being in the field.

The four-day-three-night camp is also expected to provide participants with mentorship and networking opportunities “so that they have someone to turn to for advice if they feel the calling from the Lord” rather than just leave with “head knowledge”, said Sia Chin Leong, 20, one of the event’s organisers. 

“I hope we will be able to catch a heart for the nations and help other countries, and that we see our careers as not just building our own kingdom,” said the year two medical student at Nanyang Technological University’s Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine. 

He feels that there is a risk among medical and dental students “of getting [too] comfortable” with their chosen path.

“You can convince yourself that you are living a Christian life with a good family and a successful career. But we have to challenge our peers that if the Lord calls us to live that radical life, will we say ‘yes’?”

The conference will not just be about taking part in mission work, but also helping future doctors, nurses and social workers to see their workplace as a mission field. 

Its organisers hope that their generation of medical workers will live out what was spoken in Isaiah 60:1 “Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you”. 

HIM Conference 2018 was started after a Southeast Asian Christian medical and dental fellowship gathering last August in Bali, Indonesia. Medical and dental students from all around the region came together to fellowship, said Sia, who attends St George’s Church.

The group from Singapore were touched to hear testimonies of how God was using healthcare workers to minister to unreached groups in other countries.

They were also inspired after finding out that the Indonesian delegation would meet every two years, despite the size of the country.

“They are going to such great lengths to mobilise themselves. On the other hand, we are so small and we don’t have any geographical boundaries to cross. But yet we aren’t doing this.” 

Now that Singapore has three medical schools, several medical and dental students felt that it was timely to organise a similar convention for their Christian peers here, he added.