This is Sam from the Mask on Journey Podcast, and our goal with the podcast has helped you to try to find your way in this difficult world. Your chosen Truth Network Podcast is starting in just seconds. Enjoy it, share it, but most of all, thank you for listening and choosing the Truth Podcast Network. This is the Truth Network. Welcome to Truth Talk Live. All right, let's talk. A daily program powered by the Truth Network. This is kind of a great thing, and I'll tell you why. Where pop culture, current events, and theology all come together. Speak your mind.
And now, here's today's Truth Talk Live host. How important is the doctor in your life? You're hurting, you're sick, you've got to call a doctor, you've got to go see a doctor, you're already going to get in your car and go, whether you have an appointment or not.
That's how important. And what if you're in the third world? What if you're way over in Asia? What if you're way over in Africa, and there isn't a doctor for 300 miles? And then, you meet the doctor. The doctor saves your life, and the doctor tells you about Jesus.
That might just be what happens. You might have just intersected with an amazing ministry called MedSend. And I am with the president of that ministry right now. He's also author of an amazing book called Compassionate Love. How God is blessing a hurting world. He's like the chief medical missionary of this outfit here in Charlotte, or really Fort Mill, but south of Charlotte in North Carolina, South Carolina. Rick Allen. Man, it's just good to have you.
Everything I just said in the introduction, talk to me. Are we spot on here, or what? You're spot on, and one of the interesting things I mentioned is, my wife and I have four daughters, and if one of them was sick, and she couldn't get to see the pediatrician that day, mama would be mad.
Mama would be on the warpath, and yet we see individuals put their children into a wheelbarrow and walk for a day, two days, in order to get to one of the doctors that we support. So God's using these individuals who surrender so much. They walk away from the financial rewards.
They walk away from the prestige. They walk away from the comforts of being a healthcare professional in the United States to go, quite frankly, to places that I could not live to serve, and they have one agenda, to be the hands and feet of Jesus Christ in a hurting and broken world. That's tremendous, and that is what led you, an entrepreneur, a pastor, a pretty remarkable testimony. It's just a little guy thinking you're going into religion, but God had other plans, obviously, and the devil had other plans, and thankfully, God's plans intersected. Give us a quick snapshot of your testimony, and how you got in a pastor, and then how you got into this amazing medical missions, and then folks, you're going to hear some stories on this segment, and we're going to maybe do a couple of segments, Rick, if you can. I have four daughters, too, so we're hashtag girl dads, right, so we might do multiple segments.
What you don't hear on the show off the air is going to be a whole lot of fun, too. I don't know if we record that, but so tell us a little bit about that, like how God brought you to himself and ended up through different trajectories of life all the way to where you are today. Thank you, yeah, I grew up Catholic, went to a Catholic school, and I had some problems there. I had some learning difficulties, which were not diagnosed, and I had some spiritual issues related to the nuns and priests that had me walk away from my faith at a very early age. Some personal problems within our family just turned me in a direction where I was angry at God, and I walked in that anger into my 20s when the Lord got ahold of my heart through a number of different avenues, including my wife. As we had our first child, my wife crying out to God in the insecurity of raising a new life, and God showed up in her life and transformed it. I saw that transformation, I wanted to support it, and it was really through that process that a young pastor opened up his home for a Bible study to a bunch of us guys. I was a young man at the time, 30 years old, and it was at his kitchen table in the middle of a Bible study that for the first time I professed my belief in Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior, and then he was able to baptize me, and it began an extensive journey as most of us have. Once you make that commitment, the Lord takes ahold of your heart, and with some of us, particularly those of us with a hardened heart, it takes a while.
So it was probably a decade really, but the whole time the Lord's melting my heart of stone and drawing me closer. I start in the church setting up chairs, because that's all I'm equipped to do spiritually. I think the church I was attending was wise in giving this brand new believer the responsibility of setting up chairs in the gymnasium we were meeting in. I went from setting up chairs to relocating from just outside of Philadelphia, where I was born and raised, to Connecticut, just outside of New York City. And I was a professional in the software business. I started off as a sales guy, and my last responsibility was CEO, and had a tremendous run with my professional life. As I did with my spiritual life, I continued to mature and ultimately attended Black Rock Church in Fairfield, Connecticut, which was an enormous blessing to both my wife and my four daughters. So from there, I joined the missions board and learned a lot about missions. As a young Catholic kid, you don't know much about missions, so I really cut my teeth on an understanding of missions with their outstanding missions program. Then was asked to be an elder, and as an elder, I was able to be enormously blessed by another group of men. And from the elder, under the tutorship of our senior pastor, Dr. Steven Tresh, I was offered an opportunity to pastor a church in Stamford, Connecticut. And they had had a split, and I was invited in to become their pastor shepherd. And it was an amazing opportunity.
I was the pastor at Black Rock Long Ridge Church in Stamford, Connecticut, for a period of eight years. During that time, I was introduced to a need that was at MedSend to help them with their next generation of growth. And it was an interesting story I'll just share briefly with you. My eldest daughter was home from college. She got a two-week engagement filing papers at MedSend, and one day she had to have an oil change. And my wife dropped her off and then picked her up in the evening and went in and talked to the office manager, who said that MedSend needed some help, that they were struggling. My wife came home and said, would you consider helping MedSend?
Of course, I wasn't aware that they were struggling or having any issues, and I looked into it. I expected to be there for just a couple of months, and here I am 16 years later, all on an oil change. And of course, a lot of other changes in your heart, your life, your ministry. What is it about this ministry that attracted you?
What got you excited about it? And in answer to that question, obviously you can talk about what MedSend does. Thank you. Yes, so the thing that I find attractional is that this is what Jesus did. He preached and healed. And that's what these healthcare professionals are out in the world doing. They are emulating what Jesus did. They are bringing the gospel of Jesus Christ, and they are bringing their knowledge of the human anatomy to help with healing.
And that's what attracted me and still keeps me in awe. 16 years later, I wake up humbled to serve the individuals that respond to God's calling in this way. And truly, you hear of miraculous situations where people who should for all practical purposes be dead, and these doctors and nurses turn around and say, here they are alive.
And we can only attribute it to the grace of God. How many doctors, how many people are they impacting on a daily basis all over the world? All the surgeries that are happening. The numbers will blow you away, and the miracle stories will blow you away. When we come back, Rick Allen, CEO of MedSend, is going to share a couple of those stories with us. Will you, Rick? And then give us the website of the ministry before we take this break, and we'll come back after a quick break.
It's MedSend.org. We'll also make this an on-demand podcast as part of the Truth Podcast Network, so you can share this with your friends if you have any inclination toward medical missions. If you want to go on a short-term trip, if you want to link up with these folks, you got to learn more.
You'll be blown away. And the book that he wrote is called Compassionate Love. How God is blessing so many in a hurting world by Rick Allen.
More coming up on Truth Talk after this. From entrepreneur to believer in Christ to pastor to now the CEO of an amazing medical mission called MedSend, this man of God is with me right now. He's Rick Allen. He's the CEO of MedSend, a medical missions organization that has supported over 700 healthcare professionals in 103 countries.
This is even growing as we speak. And I'm with him right now in the offices here in the world headquarters of MedSend. We had a great barbecue lunch, and the conversation is even better, man. It's good to talk to you, Rick. I feel like we bonded. You know, in the South, you really do bond over barbecue.
You got to admit it, buddy. That's right. Especially outstanding barbecue like we had. So yeah, that was a real blessing. So rich fellowship.
But you know, the stories. I mean, you had us on the edge of our seat. I mean, before the food got there, you're telling us about how God saved you, how God called you to pastor. The wise advice of your elder board to say, hey, focus on the church and building us up, and we'll do all the marketing, we'll do all this, the legwork, but you build us up. You shepherd, you pastor. And then somehow you intersected through an old change as you shared the last segment and, you know, meeting the folks at MedSend, getting called into this missions.
And now you are doing it. You know, you're in it and you're traveling all over the world. You're, you know, you're on your way to Africa.
You go to Asia. Talk about the daily life of the CEO of a medical missionary agency like MedSend. Well, it's an enormous blessing because I get to interact with individuals throughout the world and see how God is using them to bless what is increasingly a difficult and dangerous world where healthcare is scarce in so many places around the world. And they get to put a physical touch on individuals, heal their bodies and heal their souls. And it is truly amazing to see it, to experience it.
I do get the opportunity to travel and to visit some of these remarkable places. And I will tell you that in every case they are delivering healthcare in a low resource environment. And that makes it extremely difficult. But the stories are varied. They're across the board. Some are in hospitals. Some are in clinics.
Some are in very, very low resource environments. Some work in brothels. And I just want to share this amazing story with you. When I was considering how the Lord might use me and take me out of business and put me into a role where I could use my experiences in a different way. The one thing I prayed that he would not do was to involve me in sex trafficking in any way. My heart just couldn't take it. With four daughters, I tear up just at the thought of what happens in that environment. And yet we have supported an individual who has been being a physician, a doctor amongst sex trafficked boys and girls in Thailand for 20 years.
How do you protect your heart? How do you stay focused on the Lord and come alongside of and love these young boys and girls who are being abused? It is an amazing story that I don't think I could last 20 minutes in that role. And what she would do is she really got to know the individuals who were doing it and convinced them that she would care for these boys and girls. And when they were done with them, they would give them to her and she could get them to rescue operations. So this is an extreme example, but it shows the diversity of opportunity for the Lord to use healthcare professionals throughout the world.
I want to hear another story. Just for perspective, our listeners have heard from us about a lot of different medical things. Our listeners graciously helped this hospital in the Darfur area and then in the Nuba Mountains of the Sudan. We know you and I could get in our car and drive to any kind of medical facilities. There's urgent care facilities right here in beautiful Fort Mill, South Carolina, all up into Charlotte on either side of us.
Some of these African areas have one hospital for 500 miles. They die before they get there, like women trying to deliver a difficult pregnancy and things like that. So these doctors, boy, they have trauma. The daily life and regimentation of these doctors, Rick Allen, has got to be intense and they need a lot of prayer and that's why MedSin is ministering to them. Comment on that and then tell this other story you're going to share too, will you please?
Well yeah, that's exactly right. When I first got involved and I interviewed some of the folks who were coming home, I felt like they were burned out. But I have come since to learn that it's really more PTSD and what we call moral injury. And we have started a ministry within the context of MedSin to be able to come alongside of individuals with what we call the Longevity Project. And the Longevity Project provides a financial grant for self-directed care. So these missionaries, individuals, couples, and families can take the financial grant that MedSin gives them and apply it against any of the organizations that we have fully vetted, to make sure that they're Christ following and committed to the service of missionaries. And it has had amazing results, including a couple of just wellness opportunities like what we call Fly in a Friend.
So once a year you can use your grant, no questions asked, to fly in an individual that you love or a friend that will enhance your ability to stay on the field and continue in this very difficult work. It's truly amazing to hear some of the stories. And again, if you go to Compassionate, you can go to Amazon and pick up Compassionate Love by me and read a couple of the stories. Some of them, three, are actually from national physicians.
These are individuals who are African doctors that we are supporting as well. So it is amazing to see and to experience their stories in this way. And I can talk about a woman, Kathy Holzer. And Kathy was interesting because she continued to be called to some of the most difficult parts of the world. So she was in northern Iraq when Saddam bombed the Kurds, and she got pulled out of there. And then she was sent to the Sudan.
And she served in the Sudan in the Darfur region for a number of years, three times. She lost everything that they had built up. So they were building clinics, and the rebels would come in, tear the clinics down.
They would run. She'd come back, build the clinics back up again. A truly amazing story.
And she was called to Afghanistan and was serving there when the Americans came in. So the interesting component of the message of Kathy is that healthcare professionals can get access to anywhere in the world. They are welcomed because they bring healing. Even in places that don't welcome Jesus, they still bring healing, and they bring Jesus.
I love that. And one thing you've said to me in our different conversations is, MedShare, you wear your faith on your sleeve. You all are explicitly and expressly driven by the gospel, and you're supporting these amazing doctors and medical staffs and teams all over the world to share the gospel. Talk about how important it is sharing the gospel through a medical platform and how hearts are tender. Hearts are literally being held by these doctors, and suddenly someone who might be Muslim or agnostic or angry at God like you were for part of your youth, they're suddenly open because of this through this medical channel, and your MedSend medical missionaries are there inviting people to Christ.
That's right. It is truly amazing because you not only touch an individual, but you touch a family and you touch a community. And we see so many times where individuals are just absolutely amazed to hear the name Jesus, particularly from a physician or a nurse or someone. When you heal someone's child or you heal their wife or you heal them, they're willing to listen and they show respect. And part of that respect is an invitation back to their home and back to their community. So the extended reach that a healthcare professional has is not just with an individual, but they are shown enormous respect in homes and communities when they can go out and visit. So their reach, their ability to share Christ is enormous.
And even in places where it's illegal to proselytize, and of course we need to respect the local laws, you can always answer what I call the question. And the question is, why are you here? And the answer is because Jesus loves you and he sent me to serve you. And when they hear that, after you have healed someone in their family, you see the tears flow and the first breaking of ice in their heart as the Holy Spirit touches them through a healthcare professional. So encouraging. Wow. Jesus sent me, I'm here to love you and to serve you.
And I love that. So often it's serving you with a surgeon's knife, with stitches, with, you know, here in the West, little infections that we can get cleared up in a day, you just go run to the drugstore, get, are killing people over there. And so you're equipping these missionaries real quick, we're out of time, but how can our listeners pray for you and how can they support you financially? You share with me at lunch, Rick Allen, that you depend on the generous resources of people. Give us real quick that and then your website for folks that want to learn more about how they can give, how they can pray, how they can go. Maybe you have a doctor in your life that loves the Lord is like, how do I support other doctors like me in Nigeria or in Asia or somewhere or Sudan? And then your book, Compassionate Love, How God is Blessing a Hurting World, which tells these stories, talks a little bit about your heart and in the broken world we're in and just some amazing, encouraging words in that book.
Tell us how we can find out all about it and how we can support you. Well, I'll start, I'll start with the book and it is designed to speak to the hearts of adults and young people. So if you're struggling with young people in your life and you want to show them the compassion of Jesus Christ exhibited in a real way, in a tangible way with love, pick up the book, buy a copy for your loved one, for your children, for your grandchildren.
These are appropriate stories throughout and we were sensitive that it might, these stories may wind up in the hands of young people. So that's very appropriate and it is an expression of God's love from beginning to end. It's also designed to help you explore your own calling. We're not all called to go to Africa, right?
Some of us are called to go next door, to go around the block or to serve in our local church. So there's enormous opportunity out there and it can start with you seeing God's love through this book. Another way is medsend.org, where you can read additional stories. There's also a way to support us through the website. Keep an eye on it, sign up for our newsletter and you will regularly hear these amazing stories being sent to you.
You can do it through Facebook, which is the MedSend site on Facebook, or you can do it through our website. But we are a ministry that is entirely dependent on individual Christ followers. We don't have a large endowment each and every year.
It's almost like your local church. We set a budget and then we put that budget before the Lord and those who support us. And every year we have been faithfully making that budget, supporting these individuals, saving lives. And something you asked me early on and I haven't answered, but there is the people that MedSend is supporting, it's an amazing figure, but it's approximately a million people a year are touched by these healthcare professionals throughout the world.
A million people and they all hear Jesus. Join the medical army, medical missions, share in Jesus through medicine. Be a part of it. Pray, give, go. Reach out to them at their website medsend.org. Share this podcast with everyone and continue to use whatever God's put in your hand, whether it's a medical degree or whether it's just a bow and arrow or whether it's just a cookbook and a bunch of good ideas, use it to reach people with the good news of Jesus Christ.
