John and Clara Schmidt circa 1952 in Paraguay, South America

February 22nd is Be Humble/World-Thinking Day, a day when we celebrate awareness and understanding of different cultures and the issues that confront us around the globe.

What a perfect week to introduce our forthcoming book: CALLED!

CALLED is the untold story of the life and work of medical pioneers John and Clara Schmidt.

CALLED is an adventure story that takes place in the remote country of Paraguay, South America.

CALLED is a love story of a couple who were engaged by mail when it took three months for letters to travel from the U.S. to Paraguay – and whose love deepened for each other over the course of sixty years in service together.

CALLED is a story of humble and selfless service. John and Clara gave their lives to making the world a better place for the poor, the needy, the leprous.

The Mennonite Central Committee and the American Leprosy Missions sponsored John and Clara as medical missionaries in Paraguay, South America. In their thirties, they devoted themselves to caring for people in the remote, nearly uninhabitable Gran Chaco of western Paraguay. In the decades that followed, they founded and ran a leprosy station hundreds of kilometers to the east. They were acknowledged by then president of the American Leprosy Mission, O. W. Hasselblad, as the first people to carry out the courageous and pioneering work that serves as the basis for the way leprosy is treated in the world today: Rather than locking up and further stigmatizing leprosy patients, John and Clara treated them in their homes, a pioneering treatment methodology now accepted as the norm.

But their fight was not an easy one. They pushed the edges of the envelope year after year after year. They went where most people fear to tread. They strove to change the way things were done in each of the worlds they entered. And the people around them who believed in the old ways and didn’t see the need for change pushed back. Hard. For example, the government of Paraguay threatened to put John in prison, the American Leprosy Mission and the Mennonite Central Committee cut their funding, and neighbors surrounding the leprosy station came out with a truck full of rocks to destroy their buildings and kill them if necessary. And yet they continued forward, believing that they were guided by a higher power to care for those in need.

CALLED will transport you into a world where stigma, cruelty, fear and anger do not win against the power of determined loving and selfless service.

Stay tuned. CALLED is scheduled to be released later this year.