Chad and Ellen Peacock were childhood sweethearts—growing up with close families and annual beach vacations together. The summer that Chad was set to leave for Marine boot camp, he asked Ellen to wait for him, planning to marry her when he returned. The couple wrote 277 letters back and forth while Chad was away and…
Army Veteran and His Wife Now Follow Christ on Same Path
Note: The 2019 summer season of Operation Heal Our Patriots ended on Sept. 13, and we thank the Lord for all He did in the lives of so many couples, including the Paynes. For more on this spring/summer, see the update at the conclusion of this article. Army Specialist Tony Payne returned to his Evansville,…
Remember Me
Retired Army Sergeant First Class Ronnie Busbin and his wife Beth of Cunningham, Tennessee, participated in the first week of the Operation Heal Patriots summer season in Alaska this year. Ronnie deployed to Iraq in 2004 and Afghanistan in 2006 and 2011-12. He suffers from multiple traumatic brain injuries received while performing his duties as…
God Is Transforming Lives and Healing Marriages through Operation Heal Our Patriots
Retired Army Staff Sergeant John Hosea and his wife Sara know that every day and every breath are gifts from God. On June 9, 2012, John’s armored vehicle ran over a roadside bomb in Afghanistan. The resulting blast blew the truck 27 feet in the air, killing the driver instantly. John was severely wounded. That…
Fact Sheet: Operation Heal Our Patriot
The 2019 Operation Heal Our Patriots Summer Season Started Memorial Day Weekend
Sunday afternoon nine U.S. military couples arrived at Samaritan Lodge Alaska to be greeted on the local gravel runway by a long line of excited townspeople and staff waving American flags. One participant, Army Specialist Sean Goetz of Cedar City, Utah, said of the experience, “It’s just overwhelming—the patriotism. I’m speechless. I’m just privileged to…
Samaritan’s Purse Airlifts Urgently Needed Food to Ethiopia
Update (Feb. 26): A second Samaritan’s Purse DC-8 airlift departed Feb. 26 from Greensboro, North Carolina, carrying supplies for displaced people living in the Tigray region of Ethiopia. This flight will deliver additional relief supplies, including thousands of solar lanterns and more than a thousand rolls of tarp for repairing or constructing shelters. Our work…
Beekeeping Project Lifts Families in Kenya Out of Poverty
When Samaritan’s Purse staff met David, he was struggling to provide for his wife and two children in their poor village in Kenya. He worked hard as a farmer, but it wasn’t enough to keep the family out of poverty. “I had lost hope of educating my children,” David said, as he couldn’t afford their…
El camino a un nuevo corazón
If you’d seen Francis play with his friends in the early days of his illness, he would have seemed like many other little boys living in Uganda. He loved airplanes, admired Spider-Man, and was known to be a little stubborn—a trait he got away with by making those around him laugh. But there was something…
Meet the People of Guidan Gado
Auta’s skin is dark and taut with valleys of worry and determination etched into her forehead. She is 58, and her husband died three decades ago. She sits on a small rock outside her home in a village in Niger, West Africa, and holds a wiggly granddaughter as she speaks. Around her, she sees a…













