On top of a mountain in Horn Creek, Colorado during the summer of 1978, a dream was born. A dream that one day, healing for the land and people of a war-stricken country named Vietnam would come in a form of a medical team.

Six young adult leaders of the Vietnamese United Methodist Youth & Young Adult Fellowship made a decision to bring back their young people to their homeland to embark on a healing ministry.

In the summer of 2000, the Good Samaritan Medical Ministry made their first trip back to Vietnam. One physician and four young adult volunteers treated 1,100 people in 10 days in the Mekong Delta on a meager budget of $12,000. As word spread throughout the United States, more and more volunteers came to join the team.

In 2002, Dentistry was added, effectively becoming the Good Samaritan Medical-Dental Ministry (GSMDM).

In 2003, Optometry was added along with a team of medical-surgical specialists, including Emergency Medicine, working in a close relationship, with Hue University of Medicine and Pharmacy.

By 2004, the ministry's growth was explosive; GSMDM made a strategic move north to province of Cao Bang while anchoring the Emergency Medicine Training Team in Hue. The teams would start coming to Vietnam twice a year. The EM Development Team began to Hue for a week in March of every year.

A team of 60 internationally recognized EM specialists organized the largest international medical-nursing conference Vietnam had ever seen and today remains as the premier medical conference in the country.

After 13 years of work throughout the country of Vietnam, GSMDM made a decision to return to the province of Cao Bang with one single objective: To improve the healthcare system for the entire province.

It is always wonderful to come 2 weeks every year to help the people ourselves but what happens after we leave? To make a long lasting impact on the conditions of the local people, their physicians must be able to care for their own. Started in 2013, our team of primary care physicians has been training local physicians and empowering them to care for their own patients. This training will last 4 years.

Today we continue to build on the progress we made over the past 15 years, adding more services / projects as the needs arise.