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Dr. Richard Beckermeyer was a reluctant dentist. For his first five years of college he didn't know what he wanted to do, but it sure wasn't dentistry, "I actually had some very terrible experiences (at the dentist) when I was a kid," he says.
Still after five years of college and still no career direction, Beckermeyer said he needed to get a job. As luck would have it he found one in a dental lab.
"I found out that I really enjoyed working with models, and I was really good with my hands, so I decided to try dental hygiene just as an experiment to see if I would like to work with people and found out that I really enjoyed that." As it turned out, it was a perfect fit. He graduated in 1989 with a bachelor's degree in general studies and an associate's degree in dental hygiene.
Still, Beckermeyer was not content.
A lifelong Seventh-day Adventist, he had always dreamed of doing mission work.
However, "At that...