TULSA, Okla. — Dr. Brandon Ganzer is a family doctor. He just returned from a medical mission trip in Ukraine. They are all part of the family residency program in In His Image, a non-profit affiliated with Ascension St. John.
He said they were Western Ukraine. The city where they were has a population of about 100,000 people, but since the war began, the city has become home to 50,000 more people. Ganzer said many of them are displaced from Eastern Ukrainian cities, those people are the ones he and his colleagues helped.
“One of the biggest needs we met felt like the human touch need and the counseling and mental health that people were suffering from the things they saw. It was really tragic to hear many of the stories and the kind of trauma that people went through,” Dr. Ganzer said.
His team was made up of ten people, among them six doctors, a nurse, and three others. Ganzer said they train family physicians who want to use medicine as ministry.
They spent one week in Ukraine treating people who who had medical needs, but also helping heal hearts wounded by the traumas of the war.
“We feel a call from God to serve people and be the hands and feet of Jesus Christ himself and show them the love of God as we serve their physical needs, we want to tell them that God loves them, and he wants them to know him as well,” Dr. Ganzer said.
Dr. Ganzer said the memories from his trip to Ukraine will forever live in his heart. He encourages others to continue showing their solidarity to Ukraine, even from thousands of miles away.
“In Ukraine, they’re still losing lives, there are cities that are still being destroyed, there’s people that are still suffering so going on a trip like this kind of brings it to the front again and it’s a good reminder that this ongoing and will be so for some time and we need to continue to pray for them and just ask the Lord that there would be an end to this conflict.”
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