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…
Operation Christmas Child
Age Is No Obstacle for Shoebox Packing
Leila Mae Cummings’ favorite activity is to pack Operation Christmas Child shoebox gifts. This 98-year-old resident of Greensboro, North Carolina, packed hundreds of them this year because she has a heart for children and hard work. “Growing up on the farm, I can’t ever remember a time when I didn’t have a job to do,”…
Operation Christmas Child
Local Christians Use Shoebox Gifts to Help Plant Churches in Remote Mongolia
Highways leading out of Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia’s capital city, continue east for many miles as far as the city of Chinggis. From there, the roads diminish to mere gravel paths that stretch across the vast pasturelands of Khenti Province. It’s from Chinggis, where transportation begins to get more difficult, that six churches are praying—paving the way—for…
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Our Ministry
Pushing Themselves to the Limit—For a Good Cause
Matt and Jessica Cook stood satisfied at the summit of Mt. Kilimanjaro staring out at a carpet of clouds hovering nearly two miles below them. The father-daughter duo from Cuba, Missouri, had reached Africa’s highest peak—19,341 feet above sea level—after an almost weeklong test of strength and endurance. With a love for Samaritan’s Purse and…
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…
Discipleship, Education & Training
Former Vice President Mike Pence Encourages Military Couples in Alaska
Former Vice President Mike Pence and his wife, Karen, joined Franklin and Jane Graham to support wounded veterans and their spouses at Samaritan Lodge Alaska this past week. “To be some small part of simply saying thank you, thanking them for their service, but also encouraging them to grow in their faith, to strengthen their…
Discipleship, Education & Training
We Remember 9/11 and How God Is Healing Our Heroes
Each year in September we’re reminded why the United States is at war—why so many of our military men and women have been deployed into combat zones over the past 18 years. The world-shifting events of September 11, 2001, launched our nation into a global war on terror that continues to this day. Since 2012,…
