As part of one of my trips to East Africa, we hosted a major dinner for dozens of partner surgeons at our hotel in Addis Ababa.
Most of the surgeons I had met in the past, but there was one I didn’t recognize, so I went over and introduced myself. His name was Dr. Paul Lim, and he was a Korean American plastic and reconstructive surgeon. All the other doctors and staff at the dinner were Africans, so I assumed that Dr. Lim was here on some kind of mission trip.
“Are you a visiting surgeon?” I asked him.
“No,” Dr. Lim replied. “I live here.”
Wow, I was shocked at this. Ethiopia is one of the poorest countries in the world. You don’t meet many plastic surgeons who move from America to Ethiopia.
“And my wife is a pediatrician, she’s here with me also.”
Yikes, now this was even weirder. Two well-trained American docs moving to Ethiopia from the U.S.?
“And we have two young children with us, they are 5 and 7 years old.”
I was speechless. He told me that they used to live in Minneapolis in a beautiful suburb where I’m sure they were making a lot of money with both parents being doctors. And then for some reason, they decide to leave it all behind and move to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
I really couldn’t believe it. Why would anyone walk away from a very comfortable lifestyle in the United States, making close to $1 million a year, living in a beautiful home with excellent school systems for the children?
I started peppering him with questions. I had to find out what motivated him and – if he was happy with this decision. Why would anyone ever move from the United States where the median income is $47,000 a year to Ethiopia where the median income is $790 a year? I had to find out why!
I asked him what life was like for him and his family here, where do they live, was it safe, did they have any local friends and what did they do for fun? I asked about their young children and what kind of schools did they have for them.
He told me there are some pretty good schools for ex-pats and the kids are doing well. He told me that his wife loved it and she had a very busy pediatric practice. He seemed really happy which I just couldn’t understand.
I told him that I’ve been doing this work for many years and I traveled to most of the poorest countries in the world. And in my travels, I met many surgeons from America who devoted tremendous amounts of time to travel to developing countries to provide surgeries for the poor.
But I’ve never met anyone like him. No one who had moved their young family from a beautiful American suburb to a place like Addis Ababa. I tried to say it in a nonjudgmental way but I’m sure he could tell I thought he and his wife were completely crazy to do what they did.
He smiled and he told me, “Brian, I won’t say that it’s been easy. It’s been challenging in many ways. There are power outages, lack of water, empty grocery store shelves. And of course, we miss our big American cars and smooth American roads. But in many ways, these have been the happiest years of our lives. The impact that my wife and I are making here in Ethiopia is 100 times what it would be back in Minneapolis. “
But you’re making such a sacrifice I told him.
I really admire you for doing it. I’m just trying to understand what gave you this idea and how hard was it to make the decision.
“Yes, it is a sacrifice — but it’s worth it. At least to us it is.” he responded. “My wife and I both know we could be making a lot of money back in Minnesota, but that’s not what makes us tick. We don’t want to make money – we want to make a difference. We want to help people. We want to do meaningful work. We want to make a difference in the short time that we’ve been given on this earth. I can think of no other place in the world where we can make as big a contribution as we can here in Ethiopia.”
I was stunned. Speechless. And then he summed it all up in a way I had never heard before.
“I want to lead an intentional life.” Dr. Lim confessed with a big smile on his face.
The conversation with Dr. Lim had a profound impact on me. What about my life? Would I look back on it and have regrets? Was I making the most of my time here on this earth? Was I living an intentional life?
I thought about all the incredible doctors I had met over the years, from Dr. Adenwalla and Dr. Subodh in India to Dr. Poenaru in Somalia, and now Dr. Lim in Ethiopia.
To me, these surgeons were heroic examples of how to live completely selfless lives with integrity, honesty and meaning.
I knew I could never be as good and as self-sacrificing as they were—I would never be able to move my family halfway around the world to help others—but I could find a way to continue the work I had started with Smile Train, striving to empower even more doctors around the world and to make lives easier and healthier for many more patients.
I knew what I had to do. I knew what my mom would have told me to do.
And so, in October of 2010, after ten years at Smile Train, I made a completely intentional decision about the next chapter of my life.
I decided to start WonderWork.
THIS SHORT ARTICLE IS FROM OUR PARTNER NGO, CURE, WHO DR. LIM WORKED FOR.
In our work with the poor, we see so many dedicated men and women who have given up comfortable lives to help those in need — often moving to some of the most remote and dangerous places on the planet. The faith of these unsung heroes is a constant inspiration for us in the office. One of these heroes is Dr. Paul Lim, a U.S. trained plastic surgeon who moved halfway around the world to help disfigured children in Ethiopia…
Giving up a U.S. plastic surgeon’s salary and moving your family from a comfortable home in Minnesota to East Africa to do free surgeries for poor children with congenital disabilities takes a lot of faith.
Fortunately for Dr. Paul Lim, the strength of his faith has never been an issue. In fact, he is sure that God called him to move his family halfway around the world to Addis Ababa to be the medical director of CURE Ethiopia Children’s Hospital, which provides life-changing surgeries free of charge to poor children suffering from congenital birth defects such as club foot. Now Lim and his wife, who is the hospital’s pediatrician, together make $5,000 per month, enough for a comfortable living in Addis Ababa, but a far cry from the $7 million a year made by some plastic surgeons in the U.S.
When Dr. Lim told his extended family his plans to move his wife and two young children to Ethiopia in February 2008, some argued that he should stay in the U.S. They said he could make millions as a plastic surgeon and donate heavily to charity. His answer was a statement often quoted by the Lim’s pastor in Minnesota: “Christ does not call us to a prudent life, but to a God-centered, Christ-exalting, justice-advancing, counter-cultural, risk-taking life of love and courage.”
Dr. Lim takes God’s call to serve and love others very seriously, and one can see his faith in his work. He prays with patients before every surgery and tells parents that God sent him to cure their children. “If all we are doing is healing the physical that’s good but not enough,” he said. “We have to be holistic and reach the spiritual needs of these families, also.”
