Washington Sanitarium Medical Missionary Training-School by D. H. Kress

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Sep 26, 1907

Washington Sanitarium Medical Missionary Training-School

By D. H. Kress

As the name indicates, this school has been established in connection with our Sanitarium at Washington, for the purpose of training men and women to do medical missionary work. We do not ask those who connect with it to devote their lives to nursing after they leave the Sanitarium. We merely ask them to be missionaries, and to allow the Lord to indicate what the future work of each shall be. We do not wish those who enter the medical missionary training-school to feel that they are under obligation to devote their time exclusively, or even largely, to nursing. We desire them to obtain the training we are able to give at the Sanitarium, that they may be able to be of the greatest blessing to humanity. If called to the ministry, they will be more efficient ministers. If called to fill the position of church-school teachers, they will be able to do much more good with this training than they could possibly do without it. As Bible workers going from house to house, they can be of the greatest help by combining practical instruction with Bible instruction. If called into a foreign field, they will be better able to do as occasion may serve, and meet the various necessities of the people. While we have a three-year course of instruction, no one is bound for this period. We do not wish any one to remain in training any longer than he ought to remain. We do not ask any one to pledge himself to remain three years. Neither do we desire any to be unwilling to go to any field of labor to which he may be called to go at any time during the course, should such a call come while in training. We expect all the members to do their very best, to improve every opportunity to increase their present and future usefulness, and to do cheerfully the work that lies nearest to them; then, when called elsewhere, simply to continue to do as they did aforetime. That is what it means to be a missionary. A missionary can not specialize and say I will do only this or that. A true missionary will be willing to do anything that needs most to be done, and to go where the greatest need exists. The medical training will enable such workers to be of greater value, no matter where they may be, than they could be without such training. The work demands workers who will say in their daily deportment and life, “I will go where you want me to go, dear Lord,” or, “I will stay where you want me to stay.” No one can be a true and successful foreign missionary who has not previously been a true and successful home missionary, for foreign missionary work is merely home missionary work in a foreign field.

Those who take this training at the Sanitarium have the satisfaction of knowing that they are receiving their education on missionary ground, for a sanitarium is itself one of the best missionary fields, affording opportunities to its workers of revealing the Christ life daily as they minister to the needs of those who come as patients or guests.

We shall expect God’s blessing with the work and workers at the Washington Sanitarium. D. H. KRESS.