Dr. Richard Furman
A Willing Vessel Yozette “Yogi” Collins
Left to Right: Billy Graham, Richard Furman, and Lowell Furman at Billy’s home in Montreat, NC
With today’s worldwide scale of Samaritan’s Purse and it’s medical arm World Medical Mission, it’s easy to forget that the people at the birth of these ministries didn’t have a large-scale vision as much as a desire to meet needs and follow the Lord’s leading, even when the Lord’s involvement wasn’t clear until seen in hindsight. In fact, it’s with that hindsight that Dr. Richard Furman of Boone, one of the founders of World Medical Mission (WMM), sees the ways the Lord shaped him and used his awareness and knowledge at the impetus of WMM. Growing up in a Christian home, Furman accepted Jesus while in 5th grade during a revival week at his Baptist church, the same church where he heard visiting missionaries speak. “We had missionaries who came to our church, so I was familiar with the mission field,” he explains. “I remember talking to my mother about it, that maybe I ought to be a missionary, but I never really felt the tug on my heart that I should be a full-time missionary. [With] World Medical Mission we realized you can get a lot more doctors on the mission field than if you went yourself full time. We send 600 doctors a year short-term, and I’ve realized that when I was young and first felt that feeling that maybe I should be a missionary? This is a hundredfold better than just 23
The Journey Winter 2017
me being over there by myself.” In the previous edition of The Journey, Dr. Furman shared memories of the formation of WMM and the role Billy and Franklin Graham played in establishing it. Now, he shares other memories from those early days. “First of all, we didn’t start World Medical Mission; it wasn’t our plan,” Furman recalls. “We look back and see the Lord’s hand there and it’s just unbelievable. Knowing what man can put together versus what God can put together is no comparison.” One “coincidence” Furman recalls from those early days embodies World Medical Mission’s goal in a nutshell: Furman had the opportunity to minister to a man’s medical needs which, in turn, opened the door to share God’s love. “I had been on a World Medical Mission trip and had an overnight flight to London. In the middle of the night they asked over the speaker that if there was a doctor on board to please come forward. So, I went up and this fella had had a heart attack. I needed to get medicine in his vein to try to stimulate his heart, so I asked the crew to ask if anyone had nitroglycerin. Several people brought forward little bottles, so I laid the man out across the seats with his head in my lap and about every ten minutes I’d put a pill under his tongue
