Julian Swanson, MD
I grew up in Santiago de Chile, the son of missionaries, who spent most of their time working with abandoned children. At a young age, God put a dream in me to become a doctor to serve those without access to medical care.
I went on several mission trips, and loved every single one of them, however it was one medical mission trip that God showed me how he wanted me to serve. I was just a premed student taking vitals and translating English to Spanish on a medical mission trip to the sugar cane plantations in the Dominican Republic. These people in the sugar cane plantation villages were modern day slaves, sharecropping in perpetual debt by working the sugar cane plantations in exchange for a small home to live in. They had nothing, and without money to even go into town to see the doctor, or pay the doctor’s visit, or to buy the medicine, it just seemed as if they were at the mercy of any illness that might affect them. I wanted to serve people like these sharecroppers, help those who have no access to medical care.
I went University of Southern California in Los Angeles for medical school and then I completed residency in medpeds at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston.
Devyn and I met at our church in Houston, I was in my 3rd year of Med-Peds residency and she told me that she was an artist and knew that she wanted to serve in ministry and that she was “made for more”. From the very get go, she knew that I wanted to be a medical missionary and I knew that she had a heart for the lost and that she loved adventure. We decided together to go to Peru to serve God through Samaritan’s Purse Post residency program with the support of our home church Lakewood, family and friends.
Since January 2018, we have been serving in Peru. I have been working at Diospi Suyana Hospital, where I have been on a steep learning curve of finding out everything that has to do with parasites and tropical viruses and problems pertinent to the underserved Quechua Indigenous population. While I have been at the hospital, Devyn works at the local school as an art teacher.