Recently the Free Methodist Healthcare Fellowship has received a bequest from the estate of Marcia and Dale Thuline. The amount is in excess of one hundred thousand dollars, and this will enable our organization to better serve our members, do new things and help reach out to our churches. Funds could also be used to help our healthcare professionals in what use to be our mission hospitals. Our board will discuss this at our annual meeting in September. We welcome suggestions and will report back at our annual retreat in September.
Marcia (Lerew) and Dale Thuline grew up in the Free Methodist Church and were very active in Bible Quizzing. They were childhood sweethearts. Both went into the medical field, Marcia a nurse, and Dale a doctor. Once Dale completed his medical residency in Panama, they felt called to the mission field, where they served in both South Africa and Transkei in the 70’s. After returning to the states he joined the clinic in Arlington, WA, which had a unique program whereby doctors covered for one another while one would rotate for a year or more in a FM mission hospital. Dale continued to serve through missions, with brief trips to Haiti and Africa. Both he and Marcia lived a life of service.
In addition to mission travel, Dale & Marcia loved to travel and obtained their goal of visiting every National Park in the US and most of the National monuments. Their final foreign travel was to the Galapagos Islands off Ecuador.