Lois Dodds
Ministry to Missionaries
1940 - Present
Missionaries come from around the world to
seek rest and restoration at
Heartstream
Resources in Liverpool, Pennsylvania. There
Lois Dodds combines experience as a
missionary with counseling and education as
a psychologist to restore missionaries to
service. Until his death in 2008, her
physician husband, Larry Dodds, assisted in
spite of suffering from amyotrophic lateral
sclerosis (Lou Gehrig's disease) and cancer.
In 1983 the
Dodds and their three children returned to
their native California from the Peruvian
jungle after 13 years as missionaries with
Wycliffe Bible Translators (WBT) and the
Summer Institute of Linguistics. Larry
suffered burn out, a term just then
appearing in medical literature. He had
served as the only doctor for 250
missionaries plus natives for seven years.
Help proved hard to find.
A decade
later, while teaching in the overseas
extension program of Azusa Pacific
University, they met other missionaries
struggling with physical and cultural
stresses and decided to offer help.
Someone
donated a 90-acre plot in Pennsylvania to be
used for missionary care. Lacking resources
to develop such a tract, Lois and Larry
instead built a home and in 1994 opened
Heartstream, named to reflect two
scriptures: "Out of the heart flow the
issues of life." (Proverbs 4:3) and "As the
heart pants for the water brooks, so pants
my heart for you, O Lord." (Psalm 42:9)
One of 12
children, Lois learned to live by faith from
a young age. Her mother once set the table,
poured the water and prayed when their
family had no food and her father, a
merchant marine, was away. A knock on the
door signaled someone had left groceries. At
four, Lois was convicted of her sinfulness
by a sermon and accepted Christ in a little
country church. At 11, she dedicated her
life to missionary work. Although she put
aside college to care for her family after
her mother suffered a stroke, later in life
Lois earned a doctorate.
Heartstream
Resources is now a four-home residential
facility: Lois owns two homes, colleagues
own a third and a small house owned by
Heartstream hosts office space. The décor of
14 guestrooms reflects Lois' gracious
demeanor and the 30 foreign countries she
has visited.
Heartstream
hosts groups of 12 to 14 missionaries about
eight times a year for two-week sessions of
intensive therapy that include spiritual
care, counseling, classroom work and lots of
time for reflection.
According
to Lois, missionaries may feel that no
matter how hard they work, it is never
enough. They love and want to serve God but
feel inadequate. In their vulnerable
condition, a health crisis may turn into a
marital or emotional crisis. Heartstream
offers multi-dimensional holistic care that
includes medical, spiritual and emotional
counseling. One Heartstream assistant called
the ministry "the grace space," a safe place
where others do not watch or criticize.
Liverpool
boasts of being the home of the first
medical missionary to China, Elizabeth
Reifsnyder. Like the wide, meandering river
below, the legacy of missionary service
flows on through Lois Dodds.
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