A conference for those with a heart to serve God and serve others with medicine will be taking place this weekend in Orange County.
Called the Global Medical Missions Alliance (GMMA) Conference, it features numerous prominent speakers such as Michael Oh, the executive director of the Lausanne Movement; Dave Gibbons, the founding pastor of Newsong Church in Irvine; Phillip Lyn, the senior pastor of Skyline Church in Malaysia; and Val Tramonte, a physician who completed his family medicine training and served as faculty physician at In His Image.
Attendees will be able to choose from over 70 different workshops covering a variety of professions "” including medical, dental, and nursing "” and diverse regions, such as North Korea, Iraq, Ethiopia, Ghana, and Southeast Asia, among others. Speakers of the workshops come from a variety of backgrounds as well, from Korean American, first generation Korean, to non-Korean speakers.
"GMMA is a movement of God reaching out to the world," explained S. Peter Chung, the president of GMMA. "Our focus is to awaken and mobilize Christ-passionate healthcare workers to join in God's kingdom work, and to network with others who are already in the mission fields."
"The Lord's mandate is for us to run the race, to follow in His steps, to reach the unreached, to remember the forgotten, to heal the broken, and to carry His light wherever we go," Chung continued. "Let us "Arise and Shine' (Isaiah 60:1) together in doing His ministry!"
GMMA, which was once known as Korean American Missions Health Council (KAMHC), hosts conferences biannually in Los Angeles and New York, and also has student chapters in various universities including UC Berkeley, UCLA, UC San Diego, UC Irvine, USC, Northwestern University, University of Michigan, Emory University, Georgia Institute of Technology, and University of Texas at Austin, among others.
The conference will take place from June 24 to 25 at Bethel Korean Church in Irvine. For more information, visit conference.gmma7.org.