Calling in Adversity: A Surgeon’s Journey of Faith, War Zones, and Medical Mission

Some roads have to be walked together

Being able to join a medical mission with my wife carried a meaning that was different from any mission I had undertaken alone. Over the years I had worked in operating rooms, refugee camps and conflict settings. People often saw the surgeon, the procedure and the rescue. What they did not always see was that I had never reached those places by my strength alone.

Mission clinics make many kinds of need visible: illness, poverty, uncertainty and people who feel they have nowhere else to turn. They also teach a difficult truth. Medicine has limits, but presence and service can still carry hope.

My wife was not simply standing behind me in support. She was willing to stand in the field with me—to see the needs, accept the inconvenience and be changed by the experience together.

More than a war-zone medical memoir

The book begins with a journey from Hong Kong to Taiwan and into surgery and pediatric surgery. It then follows two humanitarian surgical missions in South Sudan and work in Ukraine. In places where diagnostics, blood products, operative capacity and evacuation are limited, a clinician must face a direct question: when skill and resources cannot solve everything, what can still be done faithfully for the person in front of us?

The story also includes fear, moral uncertainty and what happened after returning to Taiwan. Field experience became part of disaster-medicine education, urban search-and-rescue support and a wider concern for health-system resilience. This is not a story of a solitary hero. It is an account of ordinary decisions made when no option feels complete.

When professional skill becomes something that can be offered

Medical mission reminded me that expertise is not meant to make the professional appear larger. It is a tool that can be offered when another person is most vulnerable. Surgery can treat disease and injury, but it cannot answer every question raised by suffering. Presence does not solve every problem, yet it can tell someone that he or she has not been forgotten.

This is the meaning behind the title. Direction is not found only when life is going well. Sometimes it becomes clearer precisely where control is lost and human limits can no longer be denied.

A shared calling within marriage

When a physician leaves for overseas service, attention often stays on the person who boards the flight. Yet every departure, risk and change after returning also belongs to the family. Serving with my wife changed “support” from waiting at home into seeing, carrying and discerning together.

The final movement of the book is therefore not only about an individual calling. It asks how marriage can be shaped through service, and how two people can keep walking together when the road is costly.

What the book covers

• Hong Kong to Taiwan: medical training, surgery, pediatric surgery and a changing understanding of vocation.
• Humanitarian surgery in South Sudan: refugee camps, flooding, children, mothers and the boundaries of care with limited resources.
• Medicine in Ukraine: conflict, trauma, teams, fear and clinical decisions under insecurity.
• Bringing field lessons back to Taiwan: disaster medicine, search-and-rescue support, education and health-system resilience.
• Marriage and medical mission: moving from an individual journey to a shared commitment to serve.

Who may find it meaningful?

The book is written for healthcare professionals and students, emergency and disaster responders, readers interested in humanitarian medicine, Christians exploring calling and purpose, and couples considering what it means to serve together. No medical background is required. At its center is a broader question: when no one can change everything, what does it mean to take the next faithful step?

Publication details