In This Issue

Annual Conference Canmore, Alberta
May 15–18, 2008

Feel exhausted? Need a breather? Find your spiritual life a bit battered?

Then it is time to spend a weekend with colleagues who are experiencing the same stresses, and together find a breath of fresh air! Join them and listen to spiritually challenging speakers!

Where? In Canmore, Alberta May 15–18. Expect God to touch your heart. Take in a deep breath of the fresh Rocky Mountain air, and let God regenerate you!

For information about the conference click:
www.cmdscanada.org/
annualconferenceoverview

For information about Canmore click on this site: www.canmore.ca/visiting.html

CMDS Touching The World

Dr. Roger Gingerich, along with his wife Eleanor, will be traveling to Malawi via Kenya, April 6–20. This will be a time of building relationships with several missions organizations. They plan on meeting with the African representative for World Relief as well as meeting with the Samaritan's Purse Project Supervisor for the Sudanese Doctors program. He will also give an address to the Nairobi Medical School Christian Union.

The trip will allow final planning of the Malawi Initiative with Dr. Chris Brooks (Lifeline Malawi www.lifelinemalawi.com).

Please pray for them April 6–20.

Urgent Need

We need members who will serve on the CMDS Board and share their wisdom. This is a great way to use your gifts to guide our organization into the future! It requires two face to face meetings of the board (November and May), and two phone conferences each year.
If you have an interest in this or if you know of someone who would be excellent in this position, please respond to ed@cmdscanada.org.

Student Leadership Conference
March 14-16, 2008
Guelph, ON

Our Annual Student Leadership Conference took place March 14–16. Dan Reilly, Sheila Harding, Shermeen Chan, Jonathon Sherbino and Mark Chandra facilitated the discussion while Marilyn Wieler and Roger Gingerich gave support. Twenty-eight students participated from Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, Quebec, Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatoon, Alberta and British Columbia.

The students had a fantastic time! It began with a ride in a Celebrity Limousine from the Toronto airport to the retreat complex in Guelph. It continued with great food, and concluded with the establishment of lifelong spiritual friendships. 

It was interesting listening to the students discuss complex ethical dilemmas. What would you do if..., how do you respond to..., whom do you call if..., what are my legal obligations when...They tackled these scenarios with great interest and a flood of ideas.

They realized the importance of "balance" in their personal and professional lives and understood how difficult it would be to implement this concept. Their enthusiasm was contagious!

They listened with keen interest to opportunities that would allow them to use and share their faith while following God in missions at home and abroad.

It was exciting to hear the new members of our professions speak as leaders. They will be very capable as they continue their careers into the future and will have a great impact on the future face of CMDS! A challenge went out to the students to consider volunteering for the position of Student Representative. We are thankful that several have applied! (Practicing Members: Please note this response and see "Urgent Need" below.)

Back to top

Meet Your CMDS Board Members

Dr. Robert Clark DDS
Board Member 2001–2008

Back to top

A Day In The Life Of
Our Associate Staff
(Student Ministries)

Tuesday, February 12

10:45 am—Toronto is frigid and the wind is blowing icy cold rain this morning, as I approach University Ave., to meet with a PhD student at one of the teaching hospitals.

We have met frequently since the summer of 2006. At times we meet with other Christian students, and sometimes, just the two of us. We pray and talk about what God is doing in our lives. Now he wants to learn from me how to share the faith through reading the gospel of John with non-believers. We head for the CMDS Student Meeting on College Street. He assures me we are not in the middle of a blizzard.

12:00 noon—Today’s CMDS Student Meeting is a discussion on the Saline Solution, it will be led by one of the students. I do my best to keep silent and let the students do the talking. I may ask a question or two to help clarify an issue or help out with scripture references.

2:00 pm—In the cafeteria, I meet up with a student I am supposed to “mentor.” We joke about his accepting a mentor who is not practicing medicine. He is interested in my Kenyan medical background and we spend the next hour talking about everything from the great Kenyan climate to comparing Canadian and Kenyan medical education. We agree to link up some time in the future when he has time. This is our third meeting. I am trusting God for the friendship of this student.

It about 3:15 pm— As I come back to the cafeteria I find my friend waiting. This is our fifth meeting. Our friendship has matured to the place where we are reading and discussing the gospel of John.

It all began when she discovered I came to this campus to attend CMDS Student Meetings. She shared that she experienced frustration with church. She had found it confusing and unbelievable after attending several different churches. I told her to stop wasting her Sunday mornings on church! Instead she should read a novel or sleep in. This advice surprised her! Later when I suggested we read a biography of Jesus she agreed to three chapters of John’s gospel.

After catching up on social matters (what my daughters are up to these days and her boyfriend and my wife and her exams), we pull out our texts (courtesy of biblegateway.com). My friend had never heard of Elijah so I do some explaining about the prophets and their role as messengers of God, and why Elijah is prominent. She tells me that she finds “the stuff” in the Bible unbelievable. I am amazed at the work God is doing in her life, since we started meeting.

At 4:30 pm—I step out into icy cold Toronto praying, as I head home, that my friend will let the discussions go beyond just three chapters of John’s gospel.

Peter Agwa and his wife, Lydia, and their five children
live in Toronto. He has worked with CMDS since 2005.

For more information on Peter, or to contribute to his ministry,
click www.cmdscanada.org/PeterAgwa

Back to top

Understanding Your Rights:
The Right To Practice According
To Your Conscience

If you are reading this article, the chances are good that you are already familiar with the story of a medical student whose ordeal, during the 2003–4 academic year, set in motion the events which led to the formation of the Freedom of Conscience Committee of CMDS-Canada.  Picture yourself on the wards.  You are a clinical clerk, within weeks of starting your last year of medical school, which so far has been a largely positive experience.  Your preceptors rate your performance highly.  You are known for your conscientious approach to patient care, and as for the academic side of things—well, let’s just say you are unusually bright, even for a medical student.  Working in the Gyne out-patient department one day, you see a patient who has come in requesting a script for an oral contraceptive.  Having learned that the patient is single, you find yourself unable, in good conscience, to write out the script personally, and so you...

Back to top