Trading his practice for a mission

Local doctor retires from clinic, heads to Rwanda

By Jennifer Eisenbart

Staff writer

For some people, their career is a calling.

Such is the case for long-time area physician Richard Ellingstad. Only in his case, Ellingstad’s calling turned into his career – and now as he retires, will he actually heed what he felt was his true calling?

“I thought I was being called to mission work,” said Ellingstad of his decisions when he was in college. “I made kind of a bargain with God that if I got into medical school, I would work with mission hospitals.”

Now, after 40 years of general practice and family medicine – most of which was spent in Burlington – Ellingstad retires today from Aurora Health Care in Burlington.

He will leave in February for a two-month medical mission trip to Rwanda.

“It’s like I’ve had a 40-year diversion,” Ellingstad said.

While in medical school, Ellingstad met Molly Smith – the woman who would eventually become his wife. That relationship was what postponed – not changed – his career goals.

“We worked out a compromise,” said Ellingstad, who acquiesced to his wife’s desire for a family and an ordinary life.

Molly gave birth to the couple’s first son, Mark, in 1969, and the couple immediately went to language school in Nairobi and onto a three-year mission in Tanzania. That came to an end when the couple decided to bring their first child home to his grandparents – and to the eventual home in Burlington.

“So we came back to Burlington and have been here for about 40 years,” Ellingstad said.

All three of the Ellingstad children have since found callings of their own – Mark working for USAID (the federal government’s international development program), while Tim Ellingstad is a psychologist in town and Kari Ellingstad is an epidemiologist in Florida.

Mark has spent time in Sarajevo and Israel – both volatile areas fraught with instability. Ellingstad sees the same dedication in his son that he has always felt toward mission work.

“When you think of all the people who are in harm’s way, whether they are in the military or doing work for an NGO (non-government organization) or a mission, the number of people who get harmed is pretty small in terms of the people actually out there.

“We believe God is always with us.”

That faith took Ellingstad on a number of short-term mission trips – to Kenya, to Ecuador, to Papua New Guinea. Each and every time, he returned to the Burlington Clinic.

Now, while Ellingstad knows leaving will be difficult, he will be heading toward mission work full time.

That will take him first to Rwanda, the home of bloody genocide in the 1990s.

“Rwanda was a killing field in 1994,” he said. “The genocide resulted, as so often happens, in the educated people getting killed first.

“It’s the doctors and the teachers and the other educated people (being killed).”

As a result, Rwanda’s lone medical school turned out doctors without extensive training. Ellingstad will head to Rwanda to teach and offer his expertise through World Medical Mission.

He will make this trip alone. Molly, who had accompanied him on other short-term trips, will remain home this time.

And while he may not have his family with him this time, it may just be the right time for him to make this long-awaited trip.

“It’s really difficult to leave patients I’ve known for so many years,” Ellingstad said. “And yet, I feel like I’m doing the right thing in getting back in mission.

“Whether it works out as the dream has been, remains to be seen.”