On an annual dental relief trip to Jamaica a number of years ago, Charlie Vittitow's whole philosophy on short-term missions was rattled to the core. God worked through this situation in Jamaica and orchestrated meetings and conversations that pointed Charlie to take a new look at short-term missions.
Charlie is a dentist, businessman, and missions pastor of Southeast Christian Church in Louisville, Kentucky. In this interview from the Global Missions Health Conference, he sits down with Jaime Saint to discuss how God showed him that training Christ-followers to extract teeth was a viable path forward. A number of years ago Charlie had an eye-opening experience on a trip to Jamaica. After returning he met Steve Saint who shared the idea of training Christ-followers, and finally contacted Kingspride Hammond, a ministry partner in Ghana.
First Training Trip
Charlie's connection with Kingspride ultimately led to his first trip overseas to train locals in dental extractions. Since then, those Christ-followers in Ghana have documented the treatment of over 43,000 patients without incident. If the part-time government dentist runs into a challenging case, he will often forward those patients on to those trained. Charlie shares, "there is a connection between good health and the Gospel, so that's why Jesus sent his disciples to heal the sick."
The individuals and organizations Charlie partners with continue to travel abroad, training Christ-followers to meet basic needs opening doors to the Gospel. He partners with ITEC, mPower, and other like-minded organizations in this work to bring the Gospel to frontier areas by meeting these basic needs.
If you're interested in learning more about ITEC's dental extraction training, click here. You can also watch this video from 2008 where Charlie, Steve, and Mincaye traveled to India to train pastors.
