Wheaton College Alumni Magazine Autumn 2013 | Page 28

Shane and Eden ’00

Free to Serve
Imagine if more medical
missionaries weren’t
weighed down with debt.
Find out how these four
alumni moved directly into
ministry.

Abraham ’01

by Annette Heinrich LaPlaca ’86

Molly ’01
Karla ’07

E

den, Abraham, Molly, and Karla were elementary kids in 1988,
not yet dreaming of careers in the neediest parts of the world.
That’s when Dr. Dan Fountain spent a year as missionaryscholar-in-residence at Wheaton’s Billy Graham Center. While
writing about how healthcare promotes worldwide evangelism,
Dr. Fountain became preoccupied with the biggest obstacle
keeping healthcare workers from the mission field: debt acquired
during long years of education and residencies.

Shane and Eden Neely Niles ’00
When Eden and her husband Shane got excited about a Navigators
ministry that would take them to Senegal, their sending agency told
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them, “It’s too hard to raise support and pay student loans,” says
Eden, a kinesiologist who worked as a health educator for a nonprofit
organization. But then the mission told the couple about a grant
program that repays student loans for medical and healthcare workers
in ministry: MedSend.
Dr. Fountain and a small board of directors began MedSend
in 1992 with hopes of raising a million dollars to send out
32 missionaries unencumbered with education debt. The result has
surprised everyone. Since that time, MedSend has raised $15 million
and launched more than 500 workers into ministry.
Because they didn’t have to wait while repaying student loans,
Eden and Shane, now with three children, have ministered for
ten years among an unreached people group in Senegal, where