By Dr Rebekah Heng

It started when I was 13. Honestly, my friends wanted to go and I just followed along. I had no idea what I was getting myself into.

There were pastors who spoke into my life – who encouraged me to take my gifts seriously, to develop skills that could serve God’s people. And there were doctors and dentists on the team who I would observe with the patients – the empathy, the care, the gentleness they brought to people who had so little. That moved me deeply. It inspired me to pursue medicine.

In many ways, mission trips didn’t just send me out into the world – they shaped who I became.

And now, 22 years on, I keep going back because every year I receive more than I give. There are revelations about God’s faithfulness that I simply wouldn’t have received sitting at home. Watching the church in Nepal grow, in communities that were once closed to us – that is its own kind of miracle.

The sacrifice is greater now – the time away, leaving family – but on the hard days I remind myself: Christ gave up so much more for me. That’s enough to keep going.

“Is this enough?” 

I always carry a quiet doubt with me into the field – are we really making a meaningful difference? We’re providing basic, acute care. It’s not a hospital. It’s a camp set up in a church, or a school, or sometimes someone’s farm. Villagers walk for hours through the hills to reach us – and I wonder, is this enough?

But I’m reminded – my work is a small part of a much larger work that God is already doing in Nepal. I don’t need to see the whole picture. I just need to be faithful to my part.

To be able to give the patients comfort, to have them seen and cared for – that never changes. That’s the moment that always brings me back to why I’m there.

One shared purpose

I met JJ when he was about 8 or 9 years old – just this cheerful kid, running around the camp, playing with us between patients.

But as the years went by, he started helping. First, by just picking and sorting medications in the pharmacy. Then, as he got older, he was dispensing – and what struck me was the way he did it.

But it made me reflect – because that’s exactly what happened to me. I was once the young one on the trip, watching doctors and dentists serve with such empathy and care. I didn’t realise then how much I was absorbing. Pastors who encouraged me to use my gifts for God’s people. Clinicians who showed me what medicine looked like when it was offered with love. I was shaped by people who probably didn’t know the full impact they were having on me.

And now JJ has returned to Singapore, earned a scholarship in pharmacy, and is pursuing it. I don’t think he would trace it back to those camps, but I wonder.

That, to me, is what mission work really is.

You go to serve a community, and without even knowing it, you’re part of a God’s legacy. Different roles, different journeys, across generations. But one shared purpose.