Mark Randall grew up in Yokohama, Japan during the Vietnam war where his dad served as a surgeon, Later his family moved to a mission station in Zimbabwe where his father drafted him at age fourteen to assist in surgery. He learned the first day not to scratch your nose while gloved up and that retracting for five hours on a hip fracture was not for him. After several weeks of missing playing outside he asked to quit medicine and resolved to never practice medicine again. He went to boarding school where he enjoyed rugby and track but was bored with cricket. God was good to protect him during a convoy ambush and later a school bus wreck. After carrying multiple injured students out of the bus and watching two friends die he decided he never wanted to feel that helpless again.

He returned to the States and attended Samford University, with a brief intermission teaching high school students in Zimbabwe. Then he graduated from UAB School of Medicine in Birmingham, Alabama after doing an externship in Thailand. He met his wife during his general surgery residency in Greenville, S.C., as she ran the oncology clinic for the residents there. They realized they had a lot in common after discussing Tina’s recent mission trip to Colombia and Mark’s medical trip to the Dominican Republic. They got married and after completing his general surgery residency and obtaining his Zimbabwe medical license, he returned to operate with his father for one month there. Later they backpacked across Europe and after working in north Alabama moved to East Asia where they lived for twelve years and worked in several hospitals there. They were blessed to meet many wonderful people as they raised their two children there.

Mark’s first published story was a letter to a travel agent explaining why she should not schedule them for only a one hour layover, to make the transition from international to the domestic terminal in Bangkok. He listed all the problems they had encountered while traveling with their two small children through that airport. She responded that the letter was the funniest thing she had ever read, and to get it published, then changed the itinerary for a two hour layover instead. The article “Traveling with Children” was accepted and published in the June, 2007, Parent Life Magazine. After that Mark won a contest with a travel article describing the city they lived in and received many letters on another true story he published on why you shouldn’t use a real elephant in a Christmas pageant. He discovered that he enjoys writing about what God has taught him and hopes you will also be blessed by these stories.