SKIPPING
THE SUPER BOWL

Topics: Commitment; Good Deeds; Medical Care; Ministry; Missions; Passion; Priorities; Sacrifice; Service

References: Matthew 6:19–20; Luke 9:23–26; 12:33

Kathy Holmgren, wife of Seattle Seahawks head coach Mike Holmgren, decided to skip Super Bowl XL in 2006 for something she considered more important—a faith-based humanitarian trip to Africa.

Holmgren, a nurse, and her daughter, Calla, who is an obstetrician, left three days before the big game on a seventeen-day medical training mission with Northwest Medical Teams—a relief group based in Portland, Oregon—to the northwest region of the Democratic Republic of Congo. The two joined six other physicians with experience as missionaries.

During the three days it took to reach the region, the medical team traveled over marginal roads that narrowed to near nonexistence, waded through streams, and crossed rough-hewn and often improvised bridges. The team then worked with the staff of a hospital operated by the Evangelical Covenant Church.

The hospital is the only medical facility for 300,000 people in the region, and the staff is often forced to use rudimentary equipment when treating 2,500 patients a month. More than 3.9 million Congolese have died since 1998, most from preventable disease, according to the British medical journal The Lancet.

Kathy Holmgren spent ten months in the region in 1970 but gave up her dream of being a Covenant medical missionary to marry. Last October, Mike Holmgren’s birthday present to his wife was the trip back to the country she loves.

—Stan Friedman, “Seahawks Coach’s Family Choose Mission to Africa over Super Bowl,” beliefnet.com (Religion News Service, January 30, 2006)