M3 Welcomes Kelly Sites and Elliott Tenpenny to the 2018 M3 Conference
Who else can’t wait until this weekend?! We now only have four speakers left to introduce for the 2018 M3 Conference. Today we want to highlight Kelly Sites, RN and Elliott Tenpenny, MD. They both serve with Samaritan’s Purse and have extensive experience in disaster response. They will be facilitating our Pre-Conference Workshop #4 titled “Serving the Great Physician in Disaster Zones”.
Kelly Sites has been a nurse for 20 years. She has served with Samaritan’s Purse since 2010 as an International Disaster Response Nurse (DART RN). She has served in Liberia for two deployments working with Ebola, served in the Philippines, Vanuatu, Tanzania, Rwanda, three deployments to Haiti, once during the Cholera outbreak, Ecuador, two deployments to Iraq, and recently in Dominica on the Hurricane Maria disaster response, and in Bangladesh for a diphtheria outbreak in a refugee camp of over 800,000 Rohingya. She has been married for 24 years to her husband, Chuck and they have twins who are in their second year of college. Kelly and her family currently live in Lansing, Michigan.
Dr. K. Elliott Tenpenny serves as the Emergency Medical Response Manager of the International Disaster Response Unit at Samaritan’s Purse. Dr. Tenpenny is a native of Tennessee and received his postgraduate medical doctorate at the University of Tennessee in Memphis. He subsequently completed residency and served as chief resident in Emergency Medicine at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. Following training, Dr. Tenpenny was part of the post-residency program with World Medical Mission, serving overseas for over two years. During this program, he trained in surgery at CME Nyankunde Hospital in the Democratic Republic of Congo and then served as chief of surgery at Pioneer Christian Hospital in the Republic of Congo. In his current role, Dr. Tenpenny develops and maintains medical readiness of the International Disaster Response Unit, provides leadership in the setup and management of the emergency field hospital during deployments, and provides ongoing development and direction to the medical sector.
M3 Welcomes Russ White to the 2018 M3 Conference
In just 4 days the 2018 M3 Conference will be underway! Will you be there? We now have only a few speakers left to introduce and today’s speaker is Dr. Russ White.
Russ White, MD, MPH, FACS, FCS (ECSA) was born in the Belgian Congo to medical missionary parents. He attended Roberts Wesleyan College, the University of Michigan School of Medicine, and the Harvard University School of Public Health. He completed a general surgical residency at Brown University and a fellowship in cardiothoracic surgery at Frenchay Hospital in Bristol, England. He has served as the chief of surgery at Tenwek Mission Hospital in Kenya since 1997, where he spends the majority of his time. He is a clinical professor of surgery at Brown University School of Medicine in Providence, Rhode Island, USA. He has also been the program director of the Tenwek Hospital General Surgery Residency program since 2008. In this capacity, he works with other consultant Christian surgeons at Tenwek Hospital to train ten surgical residents in a fully approved 5-year general surgical residency. In 2018, he will be initiating the first fellowship level training in cardiothoracic surgery in the region. He is also the Chairman of the Education and Scientific Research Committee for the College of Surgeons of East, Central, and Southern Africa, responsible for education and research for surgical residents in training in 13 different countries in the region. His passion is for teaching and mentoring young surgeons in a distinctly Christian setting. He has special interests in cancer of the esophagus and rheumatic heart disease. Dr. White is the winner of the 2017 L’Chaim Prize for Outstanding Christian Medical Mission Service, awarded through the African Mission Health Foundation. He is currently proposing a Tenwek Cardiothoracic Institute to help in the treatment and training of heart and chest diseases in East Africa.
Dr. White will be speaking in a breakout session titled, “Are Short Term Medical Mission Trips of Any Value Whatsoever?” We believe you will truly be blessed by Dr. White and his expertise in medical mission work. We hope to see you there this Friday and Saturday! Click here to register now. Use promo code SPREADTHEWORDM318 to receive $5 off.
Previous M3 Attendee Shares Testimony
Steve James, President and Founder of Kenya Relief, shared the testimony below with us that was written by Jo-Ann Caron. It is an incredible testament of the way God works. We pray the 2018 M3 Conference brings many more stories like this!
“Dear Steve,
The hustle and bustle of the holidays have ended and as I took some time this morning to plan out my coming week, I realized that I will soon be leaving on a medical mission to Kenya…and that’s when the panic set in. So I am typing this note to you to quell my inner anxiety and to tell you how you are partially responsible for my to trip to Migori.
This past February, I attended the M3 Mission Conference at Lakewood Church. To say that the hand of God led me there would be an understatement, because up until one month before, I was unaware that Lakewood Church or Joel and Paul Osteen even existed!! But that is a story for another time.
I didn’t go to the conference with an agenda, I just knew that God had sent me to Houston. I signed up for a breakout session titled, ‘No Boundaries to Love: The Perfect Place to Start Your Medical/Surgical Mission’, because it sounded interesting. When you began your presentation, I was immediately drawn in by your personality and the incredible story of how and why Kenya Relief began. That still small voice said pay attention. But as often happens, that other voice told me I was not what you were looking for. Yes, I’ve been a nurse for over 35 years but my expertise has been in OB. Plus I ‘retired’ from my hospital based position and have been conducting wellness and vaccine clinics. I have not been in an OR in 3 years. I left the session and thought, ‘I guess this is not for me’.
Over the course of the 2 and 1/2 days, I kept walking by the Kenya Relief Exhibition Booth but was too afraid to approach for fear ‘I wouldn’t be good enough’. At the close of the conference, Caleb, who was the emcee, addressed the conference attendees. He felt led to say that there were a few members of the audience who had been walking by a particular booth for several days but fear was keeping them from moving forward…fear of not being good enough, fear of the unknown, fear of stepping outside your comfort zone. His challenge was to get up and approach that booth and Just Say Yes!! At that moment in time, the message to me couldn’t have been more clear.
I left my seat and headed to the Kenya Relief booth. As I approached, you looked up and said the most incredible thing….’we’ve been waiting for you’. Wow!! I left Houston with a lot of information and went home and prayed.
On Jan. 19th I will arrive in Nairobi and meet the members of Team 2. All those fears I had in Houston have begun to dance in my brain and gut once again!!! But I go confident in the ‘One’ who has sent me there. See you soon…Jo-Ann Caron”
Leader of Samaritan’s Purse and past M3 Speaker, Ken Isaacs, Nominated for Director General of the United Nation’s International Organization for Migration
M3 would like to congratulate one of our past speakers, Ken Isaacs, on his nomination for the next director general of the United Nation’s International Organization for Migration (IOM). Mr. Isaacs serves as the Vice President of Programs and Government Relations for Samaritan’s Purse and plays a key role in their international relief efforts. With 35 years of experience organizing relief plans helping control the flow of migration, Isaacs seems the perfect fit for the IOM position, whose agenda involves handling one of the largest forced migrations due to a global refugee crisis.
Most recently, Ken Isaacs has served in relief efforts in Iraq, including setting up the first field hospital in Iraq in 2016, like the one that will be on display for tours at this year’s M3 Conference. Mr. Isaacs is currently involved in providing aid to Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh.
We applaud the work Ken Isaacs and Samaritan’s Purse are doing around the world to help bring relief and aid to those who need it most. We are proud to call them partners of M3.
Click here to read more about Ken Isaacs’ nomination.