FAQ

Medical Missions Outreach partners with local New Testament churches in developing countries to provide quality care as an outreach to the community in an effort to share the gospel and make an eternal impact on our patients. The local pastor or missionary, along with his church people, shares the gospel with each patient who comes through the clinic. Then long after our team is gone, the patients will have the opportunity to seek prayer and counsel for their spiritual needs and will have support and feel love from that pastor, missionary, and church people who live and work right in their own community.

Because we work with local missionaries and national pastors in their communities to share the gospel with each patient who enters our clinics, we can assure you that our work is sustainable. Our providers also focus heavily on patient education in order to empower individuals to care for themselves and their families properly, following up with local healthcare providers for continued treatment as needed. For more about how this model works, read “Volunteerism: Helpful or Harmful?”

We love having students along on our trips, and value the opportunity to encourage future healthcare providers to consider their contribution to global healthcare. We will make every effort to put students on a rotation schedule through different clinic stations, depending upon team size and the types of clinics available. These stations may include triage, lab, pharmacy, and assisting a provider.

Though we primarily serve in developing countries, we do maintain the same ethical standards by which we abide in the States. Please do not expect to perform skills or procedures that would not be within your scope of practice as a student. We will have licensed medical professionals available to help you learn, but we are careful to protect our patients, our providers, and the testimonies of Medical Missions Outreach and the local church with whom we will be working.

Although we want to teach and we want the student to have a rich learning experience, our primary goal is to serve a large number of patients so that they can hear the gospel. We will endeavor to teach as much as we can, time permitting.

You will probably be surprised by how much you can contribute to clinic even as a non-medical volunteer! There are some very important tasks that we can quickly train you to do, enabling our providers to see more patients. You might be asked to help escort patients, assist in triage, stock and organize supplies for lab and pharmacy, or pull glasses for our vision team. We will send out your clinic assignment before the trip, and we will give further details during team orientation. You’re going to love serving with MMO!

We would love for your church or school group to join one of our teams! Please have your trip leader reach out to [email protected] to find out how to reserve multiple spots on one of our upcoming trips.

Covered by your trip payment:

• Airfare from and to your major preferred airport (or as close as we can get to it!)
• Lodging
• Three meals per day
• In-country transportation (may be an in-country flight, depending upon the destination)
• Clinic supplies and medications for our patients
• Costs associated with clinic set up
• Travel insurance
• Your Welcome Packet

NOT covered by your trip payment:

• Passport fees
• Visa fees
• Vaccinations and travel medications
• Your personal clinic supplies (for providers/students only): gloves, disinfectant wipes, BP cuff, stethoscope, otoscope, hand sanitizer, etc.
• In-transit expenses: meals in airports, lodging in the event of a delay (see Travel Insurance), etc.

Once you have been accepted and your deposit is processed, you will be able to log in to your account and set up a fundraising page for your remaining trip balance. You will be able to personalize this page and publish it to social media, send through email, etc. Your donors can use this link to donate directly to your trip. It’s easy and very helpful! Just pay close attention to your fundraising deadline!

We ask that you do not conduct fundraisers for your individual trip outside of this site. Fundraisers on GoFundMe, FaceBook (other than posting the link to the above public profile), etc. are in violation of our fundraising policy and will jeopardize your place on the team. Please direct all questions to our financial department.

We ask that you carefully communicate your fundraising progress and deadline to your donors. Should any funds be received after your balance has been paid and/or the deadline has passed, the funds will be used toward the overall costs of the clinic. We appreciate any funds given that will help us extend our pharmacy capabilities for the patients we will see.

The days of receiving paper tickets are long gone! A couple of weeks before your trip, you will receive an email that contains a spreadsheet for our team’s flight itinerary. Your confirmation number will be on this sheet so that you can check in ahead of time on the airline’s website if you wish. You’ll also be able to see team member’s flight plans to know who might be flying out of your departure airport and see when you’ll meet up with the rest of the team.

Packing can be complicated! To take the guesswork out of packing we created this packing guide. Please note, however, that the packing list contains suggested items, and you won’t want or need every item for every trip. Take your destination into consideration when deciding what to include.

Though our accommodations can vary greatly due to the wide spectrum of locations where we serve, we make safety and comfort a priority when selecting our accommodations. You’ll work hard during the day, and we want you to rest well at night! We typically book a hotel (two team members per room). If you are traveling with a friend, please let us know ahead of time if you’d like to room together. If the remoteness of our location deems it necessary to use dormitory-style housing, we will let you know ahead of time and make sure you know whether to bring linens or other extra items for special situations.