I am more than a little heart-sick that I will miss the celebration of Dr. Dan Fountain’s life on April 6 due to other commitments. Dr. Dan was to me a mentor, a co-worker and encourager, a teacher extraordinaire, a role model, a founding member of my organization’s board, and a cherished friend. His death leaves a huge hole not only in my heart but in the world. I first met Dr. Dan in 2002, when in response to my inquiry he invited me to visit him and Miriam in their home in Michigan. While he fixed lunch for me, I plied him with questions, all of which he answered memorably and graciously. Later that year he read a book I had written and strongly encouraged me to get it published. I got to know him better in 2005 when he invited me and a friend to co-teach a short course with him at King’s College and to stay with him and Miriam during the course. While Miriam quietly served us (certainly the world’s best hostess), Dan regaled us with stories—from Africa, from health care in the USA, from elsewhere. I remember drinking them in, oblivious to time and what I was eating, conscious only that I was hearing rare and priceless wisdom. That same wisdom often manifested itself in our board meetings, in most of which Dan participated by phone. Our last interaction with Dan, about two weeks before he passed away, came about when he felt strong enough to talk briefly with my husband and me by phone about troubling issues that had come up in our ministry. He quickly cut through to the underlying issues, spoke truth and perspective to us which we needed to hear, and encouraged us as no one else could have done—because he had walked our path. How grateful we were for that conversation! Last year Dr. Dan shared with me the manuscript of his last book as he wrote it, Health for All by 1985—The Vanga Story. Later I was privileged to review it for the publisher, William Carey Press. The book, which I think is a must read for anyone interested in missions, aptly summed up so many of his contributions to the world: • The importance of medical missions, their history, their problems today, and the importance of a biblical approach to health care • A profound understanding of the issues at the core of development: what enables or disables cultural progress, factors which secular and Christian development workers alike have ignored. • Abundant examples of effective cross cultural communication for behavior change, of which Dr. Fountain was, in my view, a master second to none. • Principles of excellent management in the face of very limited resources—principles which he fleshed out in Africa but which America desperately needs as well. • Remarkable examples of “whole-person care” in which Dr. Dan and his colleagues lived out an integration of spiritual and physical care which is rarely seen even in “Christian” health care. • An explanation of the theology of the kingdom of God and its implications for medical missions in particular and missions and the Church in general, which today’s missions movement will ignore at its peril. • A vision for global medical missions that brought together a community and public health orientation; an integration of spiritual, emotional, and physical care; a deep understanding of what makes development and cross-cultural relationships work—along with why biblical values are essential to the sustained delivery of high quality health care. • A poignant personal narrative of what it takes to be a missionary and how he learned to follow Jesus. I will remember Dr. Dan most for his personal faith under duress—as a 6-year-old with TB, as an under-resourced physician facing overwhelming odds in the Congo, as a man grieving for his life-time partner, as a patient fighting desperately to stay alive to finish the work God had called him to do. He knew Jesus in a way that few people really experience. He trusted his Lord when he did not get his prayers answered. I cannot think of Dan without being drawn to that Lord. His death has left me with three prayers: Lord, may I follow you as Dan did; Lord, will you empower those of us who knew him to pick up his torch and finish the work he started; and Lord, glorify yourself on April 6.