In Mongolia, Enkhsaruul turned blue whenever she cried, one of the signs that she had a congenital heart defect. Her condition made her a candidate for cardiac surgery through the Samaritan’s Purse Children’s Heart Project. After being accepted into our program, she and her mom, Boloroo, traveled to Grand Cayman in 2022 when Enkhsaruul was…
Our Ministry
Warrior Ride
11th Annual High Country Warrior Ride Saturday, May 21, 2022 – Rain or Shine! Register Now Come show your support of Operation Heal Our Patriots with a scenic ride along the Blue Ridge Parkway. Escorted by local law enforcement and the Boone chapter of the Christian Motorcyclists Association, the 80-mile ride is a privately organized fundraiser to send…
Discipleship, Education & Training
Veteran Couples Find Healing, Help in Christ During Alaska Marriage Training
The summer season of Operation Heal Our Patriots is off to a great start! We’ve already welcomed about 30 couples to Samaritan Lodge Alaska, and we expect to host nearly 160 couples before the season ends. We praise God that we’re already seeing life transformation among these wounded veterans and their spouses. Individuals are coming…
Reconnecting in Alaska
Army Sergeant Omar Cortes served in the military for 15 years and was deployed twice to Iraq. He was medically retired in 2013 due to his combat injuries. After returning home to Puerto Rico, Omar and his wife Heidy started growing apart and desperately needed to reconnect—not only with one another but with God. Omar…
Discipleship, Education & Training
Thanking God for Military Couples Saved in Alaska
On the eve of the 17th anniversary of 9/11, ten U.S. military couples gathered by the glacial waters of Lake Clark to spend a restorative week (Sept. 2-8) in the Alaskan bush for the penultimate session of Operation Heal Our Patriots 2018. And much like the nearly 140 couples that had already come to Samaritan…
Celebrating God’s Work in Our Military Couples
Army Specialist Shawna Watkins and Army Sergeant Jesse Watkins started dating after serving on combat deployments in Afghanistan. They’d been on the same mission together in 2011 when their convoy was struck by an improvised explosive device, and Shawna was sent flying from atop her vehicle’s gun turret. Next thing she knew she was in…
Faith Restored
The two Army medics were ready to quit their marriage and had a hard time remembering why they’d bothered applying to go to Alaska with Samaritan’s Purse. Just a couple weeks before Army Sergeant First Class Jason Smith and Army Specialist Amy Smith were scheduled to leave for Operation Heal Our Patriots, they delivered the…
Discipleship, Education & Training
Couples Celebrate the Fourth of July at Samaritan Lodge Alaska
Franklin and Jane Graham welcomed ten military couples to Samaritan Lodge Alaska over the Fourth of July weekend, marking the sixth week of this year’s Operation Heal Our Patriots summer season. “July Fourth is when we celebrate freedom, and freedom is something that you have to defend, because there’s always people who want to take…
Discipleship, Education & Training
Military Couples Strengthened by God in Faith and Marriage
Corporal Derrick Sharpe said he joined the U.S. Marine Corps because he wanted to “be the best of the best, be the first to fight.” “I don’t have a very good, happy kumbaya story. I grew up really poor and all I knew how to do was fight and take a beating, so I joined…
Hope for Wounded Lives and Marriages
As his unit rolled out on regular patrol that day, Army Specialist Marco Fernandez took his position in the mounted gun of a Stryker armored vehicle. They were transporting an officer to another base and then checking out Iraqi villages to look for potential threats. As Marco’s convoy sped past a town on that sunny…
