A longtime World Medical Mission volunteer is welcomed into Heaven at the age of 97.
When Jim Foulkes was growing up in Lima, Ohio, his mom told him, “If God calls you to be a missionary, don’t stoop to become the president.”
Indeed, Dr. Foulkes answered God’s higher call, devoting his career to ministry in Africa, serving for decades with World Medical Mission, and witnessing one revival after another.
After 97 years in this world, Dr. Foulkes died in the late hours of January 31, passing into an eternal glory he has anticipated since he glimpsed Heaven through a family tragedy almost 50 years ago. “Heaven is going to be much more wonderful than we can imagine,” he said last year in a video message to his church in Boone, North Carolina.
Ministering through Heartache
Dr. Foulkes faithfully served 38 years at Mukinge Hospital in Zambia, staying true to God’s call even when sickness took the lives of his wife and two children. When 16-year-old Jill was dying in 1977, she whispered to her family that God had given her a look ahead to Heaven, and with her face glowing, she reassured them that she was not afraid to die.
Three months later, his wife Marilynn died, and her funeral focused on Revelation 14:13: “Then I heard a voice from heaven saying to me, ‘Write: “Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on.”’”
God blessed Martha and Jim Foulkes with over 40 years of marriage.
Dr. Foulkes remarried to Martha Penner, a Canadian nurse serving at Mukinge, and they were blessed with more than 40 years of marriage. Two of his children followed them onto the mission field in Africa.
Gaining a Vision for the World
An Army veteran who was stationed in Panama at the end World War II, Jim was part of a generation of young men who answered God’s call to take the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the far corners of the earth. “We went out as a great army of missionaries to go from the battlefields into the Lord’s harvest,” he said.
Dr. Foulkes had pledged to become a missionary at age 22, after hearing an invitation from 30-year-old Billy Graham at the 1949 Urbana Conference and meeting a bold young missionary named Jim Elliott. Foulkes signed a card at Urbana that said: “God being my helper, I commit myself to serving as a career foreign missionary.”
Jim Foulkes, who served for decades as a medical missionary in Africa, enjoys a special birthday card in 2023.
Elliott was martyred in Ecuador in 1956, while Dr. Foulkes was completing his surgical residency in Akron, Ohio. So he and Marilynn (married in 1955) understood the risks they were taking when Dr. Bob Foster invited them to serve at Mukinge Hospital in a British colony known as Northern Rhodesia.
Tasting Revival
In preparation for his mission service, Foulkes studied at Asbury College. He was at the forefront of the famous 1950 Asbury Revival, when he shared a testimony from a revival he had visited at Wheaton College. In 2023, he returned to Asbury when the Kentucky campus was caught up in a fresh revival.
“The presence of the Lord was so real. It was a glorious time in my life, and it has just gone on and on … The fire doesn’t go out.”
Dr. Foulkes recalled those movements in a 2023 interview with Decision magazine. “The presence of the Lord was so real. It was a glorious time in my life, and it has just gone on and on, like all true revival. The fire doesn’t go out.”
Dr. Foulkes celebrates his 96th birthday at Samaritan’s Purse.
Repentance sparked both revivals, as students streamed to the college auditorium, day and night, to surrender their hearts to Jesus Christ. “In revival, sin is recognized as exceedingly sinful,” he said.
Saying ‘Yes’ to the Lord
While in medical school at Ohio State, he married a nurse named Marilynn Hall, who also had a heart for missions. Once his surgical training was complete, they shipped out to Northern Rhodesia, where Mukinge Hospital had been established in 1952.
In 1964, Northern Rhodesia gained its independence and became the nation of Zambia. Dr. Foulkes continued to serve there until 1997, and in his retirement he returned twice to Africa with Samaritan’s Purse, serving at the besieged Lui Hospital in Sudan, and a three-month encore at Mukinge.
Since his retirement, Dr. Foulkes has served on the World Medical Mission Committee at Samaritan’s Purse, where he helped develop the Post-Residency Program, which is raising up a new generation of medical missionaries.
In 1998, Dr. Foulkes received the Footsteps of the Great Physician award, which is given annually by World Medical Mission. At age 96, he recorded this video to encourage others to follow in his footsteps and say “Yes” to the Lord.
“Yes, Yes, Yes—that’s what you say when you get a nudge from the Lord,” Dr. Foulkes said. “I’ll go where you want me to go and do what you want me to do.”
Jim talks with a Samaritan’s Purse representative at the Prescription for Renewal conference in 2019.
Franklin Graham wrote the foreword to Dr. Foulkes biography, To Africa With Love: “Jim Foulkes has lived a full life, an exciting life, a life of great sacrifice in comparison to the vast community of doctors who practice medicine in the United States. … His life has been a life of heartache and joy, mixed with more than an average share of adventure.”
Dr. Foulkes also wrote a book called Hunting Stories, where he described hunting wild animals—including wildebeest and a charging hippo—to provide food for his family and the hospital.
A competitive runner since high school, Dr. Foulkes won a gold medal in the National Senior Games at age 86 by winning a 5k race in Cleveland, Ohio, in 2013. Longevity came naturally to him, as his mother lived to 107 and saw the full extent of his missionary career that she had prayed for.
