Our History
Who we are
The world is full of diseased and starving people. The need for Christian doctors and other health care workers in remote and poverty-stricken areas is well known.
Luke Medical Foundation was established in 1988 primarily as a means to support men and women who desire to serve Christ through medical missions. We are a non-profit religious corporation based in Northern California. Our purpose is to promote the knowledge of Jesus Christ by providing medical services to the poor and underprivileged. Our board of directors is primarily made up of physicians who understand the unique needs of a medical missionary.
"Thanks to financial contributions from our donors, people like Yamine Contreras receive necessary surgery. This woman is a school teacher who is doing her social service and receiving no salary or medical insurance. She desperately needed surgery for a complicated hernia, and received that much-needed surgery at Clinica Filadelfia in Matamoros, Baja, thanks to your donations to Luke Medical Foundation."
Founding Directors
In 1987, the idea for Luke Medical Foundation was formed in the minds of Grass Valley doctors, Jeff Stout, Chris Claydon and Scott Kellermann. These men, along with their wives, had been dreaming and planning for many years to establish a medical mission outreach of some kind. Jeff and Chris were graduates of schools in Mexico and Scott had been a missionary in Nepal. In 1987, along with Mike Petrillo, a Marriage Family and Child Counselor from Christian Encounter Ranch, they decided to form a medical ministry that would have as its primary purpose the training of medical missionaries.
At the same time, two young men, both EMTs, hiked and prayed through the Sierra Nevada mountains above Grass Valley, CA. The friends, John Yates and James Farrington, prayed together and asked how God might use them in the future. Both men had an interest in world missions and soon it became apparent that their calling was in medical missionary work. After much prayer, they decided to study medicine in Mexico at the University of Montemorelos in Nuevo Leon because of its history in medical missions, training and its exchange program with Loma Linda University.
Over the years, Luke Medical Foundation has aided Christian medical students from Brazil, Jamaica, Peru and Trinidad. However, the majority of our ministry has been with our neighbor, Mexico.
