Jason and Heather Fader
Both Jason and Heather Fader sensed that God was preparing them for medical missions even as children— Heather in Wisconsin, and Jason in Kenya, where his parents were medical missionaries.
In 1995, Jason and Heather first met in a general chemistry laboratory at Calvin College in Michigan. They were married shortly after graduating in 1999. Then, while Jason was in medical school at Loyola University Stritch School of Medicine in Chicago, Heather completed a Master of Arts in Teaching and began teaching high school chemistry and Spanish. They moved to Ann Arbor, Michigan, in 2003, for Jason’s residency in general surgery. In 2005, their daughter Anna was born, and in 2009, they adopted Abigail from Ethiopia. It was also in Ann Arbor that they met two other families from their church who similarly felt called to medical missions. The three families decided to begin working together to serve God as one team.
From 2009 to 2011, the Faders and their team served at Tenwek Hospital in Kenya. Jason and the other physicians in the group cared for patients and also trained and discipled Kenyan interns and residents. During those very fulfilling two years, the team added two more doctors to their numbers and explored options where they could continue teaching medical trainees in a long-term setting.
The whole team feels called to move to Burundi, in Central Africa, to be the clinical teaching faculty for medical students who attend the medical school at Hope Africa University. These eager students have had no permanent faculty since the medical school began in 2006. This is an opportunity of tremendous potential to train and disciple African medical students who will be the leaders of this underserved, impoverished, post-war nation.
Jason and Heather look forward to investing the next few decades of their lives, God willing, into the lives of these African doctors- in-training. As they make their way through language training and on to Burundi, the team keeps a blog at mccropders.com.
DESIGNATION NUMBER: 51320
