Danny Kwon, JD
AMEN Meets RAM
When Wild Kingdom TV co-host Stan Brock started, in 1985, Remote Area Medical (RAM), in order to provide free medical care to underserved populations in developing countries, he soon realized he didn’t have to go very far to find an “underserved” population. Though the term “underserved” tends to draw the mind straight over U.S. borders and into places like Africa and South America, it also applies to a multitude right here in America.
In fact, there are even more underserved people in America today than ever before. According to the Center for Disease Control (CDC), nearly 50 million Americans under the age of 65 do not have health insurance; over 120 million Americans under the age of 65 do not have dental coverage; and almost 1 in 2 Americans do not regularly receive any dental care at all.
This problem runs deeper than merely lacking a regular dentist, because the lack of dental care leads to other healthcare problem as well: over 830,000 ER visits in 2008 were directly linked to preventable dental conditions. This is why over 60% of RAM expeditions take place within American’s borders, as RAM provides free medical, dental, vision and veterinary care to anyone in need.
AMEN and RAM
In this context, it seemed appropriate for members of AMEN to join a RAM. RAM is based in Knoxville, TN, and conducts a dozen or so free clinics in various parts of the US throughout the year. Having very recently stepped into the role as AMEN’s executive director, I asked AMEN president Mark Ranzinger, MD, if he would volunteer at a RAM event with me. He agreed, and we signed up for the expedition in Knoxville, TN, in February of this year. Also joining us were David Fernandez MD, an orthopedic surgeon from Michigan, Wendell Lawrence DDS, from Michigan, and Kim Goodge RN, from Oregon.
One can guess at the first question. How are doctors and dentists able to work in states where they are not licensed? The answer? Nine states have passed laws that allow doctors, dentists, nurses, dental hygienists, pharmacists and other medical professionals licensed in other states to work as volunteers for short terms (usually less than 30 days) within their state. RAM, therefore, operates only in those nine states.
As a non-medical volunteer, I decided to show up a day early and help with the labor-intensive set up. For a better part of the day, we unloaded three large trucks and set up 40 dental stations, more than 20 optometry stations, a dozen autoclaving stations, and countless tables, chairs and curtained medical rooms. It was with these chairs, tables, and medical equipment that we filled every corner of the 36,600 square foot Jacob Building, which is normally teeming with livestock and exhibitions during the annual state fair.
At around 3pm, after we had just finished setting up, the people arrived. Scores lined up outside the building so that they could be the first in line when the clinic opened the next morning at 6 am. This means they would wait for 15 hours. Not only was the wait long, but a cold front had descended over Knoxville, which meant that these people suffered through the biting cold—weather in the teens—just to ensure they would have an opportunity to be seen by a medical professional. No question, the need is great!
The Day Begins
We showed up Saturday morning at 5:15 am to receive some very hasty orientation and to mentally prepare for the flood of people in pain that we’d encounter for the rest of the day. Because I was assigned to registration, I was one of the first to greet them. I was stunned by how cheery they appeared, even though they had waited outside in the cold all night long. Some slept in their cars once they secured their place in line with a number; others, though, slept outside, completely exposed to the elements. They came wrapped in blankets or sleeping bags, the cold steam rising off of them like an open freezer door.
We served over 1,200 people over two days. The vast majority were unemployed or on disability; thus we never asked for identification or paperwork. Many hadn’t seen a doctor in over a decade. Unsurprisingly, many were obese and had poor habits that contributed greatly to lifestyle diseases and rotting teeth.
Two Liters of Mountain Dew a Day
Take, for example, Jamie. She is a single mother of two and she traveled over 300 miles from a small town outside of Memphis in order to receive dental care. It took her two days to get to the site, and then she had also waited outside in the cold all night. But, like the others, she sat down eagerly in Dr. Lawrence’s dental chair with a bright smile on her face.
“They told me at the triage table,” she said, “that you can only fix one tooth but that’s okay. I appreciate whatever you can do to help my smile and to take away my pain.”
Dr. Lawrence took one look at her mouth and was moved with compassion. All of her upper and lower front teeth were almost gone; they had decayed from the high sugar and phosphoric acid from her drinking over two liters of Mountain Dew a day for over a decade.
Jamie is just 23-years-old, but difficult life experiences had led her down a road of poor lifestyle choices and an addiction to Mountain Dew. Obese and riddled with chronic illnesses, she was on seven medications to treat anxiety and depression. Dr. Lawrence remembers thinking, How can I leave her like this? He lifted his head to heaven and whispered a prayer. God, work a miracle through me today so I can restore Jamie’s teeth, so I can ease her pain and introduce her to the source of all power.
“Jamie,” he said, “I’m going to give you a new smile today. It may take a couple of hours, but I am impressed to do this for you.”
“I don’t want you to get in trouble by breaking the rules for me,” she said.
“Jamie,” he answered, “do you know Jesus?”
She said, “No,” but remembered that her grandma would talk about Him often.
Dr. Lawrence continued, “Jesus told me to give you a new smile today, so everything is going to be all right. It’s going to take a couple of hours to fix your teeth so, if you don’t mind, just sit back and I will tell you all about Him.”
For the next two hours, Dr. Lawrence shared Jesus with Jamie as he worked on her teeth. It wasn’t a coincidence that God led this young woman to his chair. The night before, his plane had been delayed in Detroit for several hours due to bad weather, and this delay had given him ample time to finish a Bible study on the love and power of Jesus that he had been working on. He now realized that God had prepared that Bible study specifically for Jamie, Someone who needed that message and who was, now, a captive audience in his dental chair.
Jamie left that day rejoicing; yes in her new smile, but above all rejoicing that she had met Jesus.
After Jamie left, Ryan, a young pre-dentistry student volunteer from the University of Virginia who had been assigned to Dr. Lawrence as an assistant, looked at him in amazement. It turns out that he had been listening.
“Were you more interested in restoring her smile or in changing her life?” he asked.
“I believe you know the answer,” he replied.
“Doctor,” Ryan said, “you not only changed her life but you introduced me to Jesus and I want to experience that change also.” Ryan has stayed in touch with Dr. Lawrence and is now planning to go with him on a mission trip to the Dominican Republic later this year.
Disinterested Benevolence
There’s more. We discovered that RAM’s head of dentistry, John Osborn DDS, is a Seventh-day Adventist. He had been with Stan Brock since RAM’s conception and had even developed their dental unit. He had never heard of AMEN before that weekend; now, he is scheduled to be a speaker at the upcoming AMEN conference.
As I looked at the hundreds people waiting patiently and even happily in line for treatment, I was filled with compassion. It occurred to me that Jesus must have looked upon the throngs of suffering people on earth and was also moved, but in a way only the Creator could. I then realized that He had then embarked on the greatest mission trip by coming down and dwelling with us, ultimately giving His own life so that we could live.
I then imagined a RAM-type of mission, but one that was led by AMEN. This AMEN-led mission would engage not only in acts of healing but, like Dr. Lawrence, would actively tell people about the love of Jesus. We could engage in lifestyle intervention and share principles of good health. We could even feed the people as they waited with comforting and nourishing vegetarian food. Non-medical volunteers from local churches could work together with physicians and dentists, dispensing “disinterested benevolence”—a term used numerous times by Ellen White to describe acts of charity and kindness to the poor.
Is it possible? Stan Brock thinks so. He told me, “Just start small.” He told me how RAM first started. They had very little money and no resources. In fact, they started with a single dental chair. It wasn’t even a mobile chair but a full-sized office chair that had been donated. “We would take it everywhere in the back of a pickup,” he said, “and it would take four guys to lift it out.” But then they got two chairs. Then four. And from there—RAM flourished.
Ellen White writes,
“I was shown that God requires His people to be far more pitiful and considerate of the unfortunate than they are. ‘Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world.’ Here genuine religion is defined. God requires that the same consideration which should be given to the widow and fatherless be given to the blind and to those suffering under the affliction of other physical infirmities. Disinterested benevolence is very rare in this age of the world.”—Testimonies for the Church 3:516.
Go out on a limb. Do something uncomfortable. I encourage you to experience a bit of what I experienced and volunteer at an upcoming RAM expedition (www.ramusa.org) or better yet, volunteer at an upcoming AMEN free clinic by signing up on our website at amensda.org. I cannot think of a more divinely appointed group of people to perform acts of healing and disinterested benevolence than AMEN’s network of Adventist physicians and dentists.
If you agree, please email me at [email protected] and we’ll work together to start a movement. Rare as it may be in this world, disinterested benevolence still exists. I was witness to it just a few months ago. It moved me, and will you as well.
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