Missionary Doctor Finds New Calling in South Sudan

Peter Fenoy arrived in Juba to help patients. He discovered a greater need that changed his life.

By Andrew McChesney, adventistmission.org

A family came nearly every day to the Seventh-day Adventist compound in South Sudan’s capital, Juba, to ask for food.

Peter Fenoy, the missionary physician running the small Munuki Seventh-day Adventist Clinic on the compound, found the family’s actions puzzling.

“What is going on with these people?” he asked himself. “Why are they coming every day for food?”

One day, Peter decided to seek the answer, and he went to the family’s home near the compound. Peter was shocked by what he learned as he spoke with the father, mother, two daughters, and son. The family members were taking turns eating as armed conflict rumbled on in the months before the signing of a 2005 peace agreement. The father and boy would eat one day, and the mother and girls would eat the next day.

Peter, a native of Argentina, returned to the compound and shared his discovery with his wife, Natasha, who was born in South Ossetia.

“We are focusing only on what we are doing — medical work — and forgetting the people around us who need something else,” he said. “Medical work is a good thing, but the community needs something else: clean water, food, and nonfood items such as mosquito nets and containers for carrying water.”

After praying, Peter decided to write a project proposal to the Adventist Development and Relief Agency’s world headquarters in the United States. He had never written a proposal before, but ADRA embraced it and covered its U.S.$150,000 budget.

“All of a sudden the Munuki Seventh-day Adventist Clinic became the ADRA Juba Project,” Peter recalled.

The small clinic expanded to offer food security, nonfood items, water sanitation, and emergency response. In a single year, the project’s funding skyrocketed from $150,000 to $2 million.

“I was surprised,” Peter said. “I realized that focusing on people and looking to meet their needs can develop projects that help others.”

Peter’s life changed completely.

Before long, ADRA sent him to Andrews University in the U.S. state of Michigan to earn a master’s degree in international development. He went on to work for a number of aid agencies, including ADRA, the Danish Refugee Council, World Vision, and UNICEF, in Jordan, Lebanon, Bolivia, South Ossetia, and Russia’s republic of Chechnya.

Everything started with one small thing — a desire to understand why a family was asking for food every day, Peter said.

“My whole life focused on heath before that. I didn’t realize that there was something beyond the consulting room,” he said in an interview at River Plate Adventist University, his alma mater that has sent missionaries around the world.

Peter, 39, now works as a gynecologist at an Adventist hospital up the road from the university.

“Something is bigger and more interesting than my old focus — the view of the entire community,” Peter said. “Don’t just focus on what you have and what you are meant to do, but seek to understand what people really need. That can change your view, and you can offer a better and more Christ-like response.”

Peter and Natasha Fenoy reflecting on their experience in Juba, South Sudan. (Andrew McChesney / Adventist Mission)

Part of a 2016 Thirteenth Sabbath Offering helped construct Sabbath School classrooms for children on the same compound as the Manuki clinic. Thank you for helping others to know about Jesus.