By JOYELL NEVINS
Record Herald Editor
Courtesy of the Weekly Record Herald; Printed August 5, 2011
WEST MILTON – You know that cliché about being in a dangerous situation, seeing your life flash before your eyes, and realizing that what you’re doing has little meaning?
Josh Klepinger lived that cliché, and it changed the course of his life.
Klepinger graduated from Milton-Union High School in 2002, and then went on to get his Associates in Environmental Engineering.
“But I was not very satisfied – it was not very purposeful,” Klepinger said.
Then in 2004, a car wreck lacerated his spleen and forced him to spend five days in the hospital. He realized that the career path he was on was not his “life calling.” But he didn’t know what to do instead.
Then Klepinger started observing the staff around him.
“A lot of those folks seemed to have a passion for it,” Klepinger said, referring to the doctors and nurses that took care of him.
Since Klepinger had never been an excellent student, he wasn’t convinced he would be able to go to medical school. So he became a firefighter and paramedic.
“I still felt like there was some way I could still push it father,” he said.
In 2008, Klepinger got another eye-opener. It started when his fire chief kept encouraging him to move on, and blossomed when his wife, Jessica, and he went to Iowa to help with the flood relief. He realized he really enjoyed emergency medicine, and wanted to do more in that field.
The desire to be in medicine, specifically emergency medicine, was confirmed with his trips to Jamaica.
Jessica and Josh, through Ginghamsburg United Methodist Church, have traveled three times to Jamaica on missions trips.
“The folks you serve might be materially poor, but it’s like they don’t have many possessions to insulate them from what’s important,” Klepinger said, “I always feel like I gain more from them than I would ever give.”
After the first trip, they came back, canceled their cable, and sponsored two kids: Jerome and Brittania Nelson.
Josh and Jessica most recently assisted in Columbia at the village Brisas del Mar. There Ginghamsburg partners with Texan Robert Rabb, who built a hospital clinic in his brother Clint’s name after Clint was killed in the Haiti earthquake. This was in order to continue the work Clint had started in the village through Volunteers in Mission, the mission branch of the Columbian Methodist Church.
Rabb heard Dr. Mike Slaughter speak at a conference, and knew Ginghamsburg was the specific church he wanted to bring on board to help him.
So at Brisas del Mar, which means “breeze of the sea,” Klepinger came along with his wife, his father-in-law, and 16 other church members. Their backgrounds included medicine, education, and construction: all three of which came in useful that week.
Klepinger worked with the local doctor, Schneider Dromo, who actually lives at the clinic and will do so for the next six months.
“It was humbling to work with him,” said Klepinger.
He detailed that many of the maladies they fixed were machete wounds, a common tool that is closer to a sword than a knife, and skin infection. Due to the lack of access to basic hygiene and intense humidity, infections expand rapidly.
“They’ll get what we call athlete’s foot all the way up their backs and stomach – they never dry out,” he explained.
All these trips have prodded Klepinger towards a career in emergency medicine, which is “perfectly fitted” for missions.
“The emergency rooms in Dayton are a perfect mission field,” he said.
In November 2010, Klepinger received his Bachelors in Biology from Wright State University. The supposedly average student went from a 2.7 g.p.a. in high school to a 3.93 g.p.a. at Wright State. This past Monday, he started medical school there.
“This is absolutely God’s call for me – a guy like me does not get into medical school,” said Klepinger.
After that, Josh and Jessica are willing to go wherever this path leads them, even if it’s permanently out of Ohio.
“This is it for us,” he stated, “We want to step out in faith.”
You don’t have to be a member of Ginghamsburg to go on one of their mission trips. For more information about Brisas del Mar and
other service opportunities, contact Global Missions Specialist Craig Maxwell at 667-1069 ext. 226 or cmaxwell@ginghamsburg.org.
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