Five years after his death, friends and family are fulfilling a former Baylor student’s dreams

Five years ago, the Baylor family mourned the loss of Dustin Chamberlain, a sophomore pre-med/biology major from Arkansas, who was killed in a home invasion over Christmas break in 2011. In the midst of their pain following the tragedy, Dustin’s family and friends honored him by telling his story — the story of a young man passionate about his faith, who dreamed to serve others as a medical missionary someday.

Five years later, many of those same family members and friends have made Dustin’s dream a reality through the establishment of Dustin’s Dream, an organization that partners to build medical clinics in Third-World countries, funds medical mission trips, and provides scholarships for students attending Baylor and students who graduated from Dustin’s high school in Arkansas.

In 2014, Dustin’s Dream helped build the Heart of Love Medical Clinic, located adjacent to one of the world’s largest garbage dumps in Guatemala City, Guatemala. An estimated 7,000 to 10,000 people live at the dump, and thousands more rely on it for a meager living. Amidst some of the most desperate poverty and heart-wrenching living conditions found on the planet, Dustin’s dream of medical missions is now a tangible place of healing, serving the needs of people who would never be able to otherwise afford medical help. The clinic currently features two floors, with a third floor in planning stages. Dustin’s Dream hopes to expand the clinic to include laboratory, radiology and physical therapy services, in addition to the medical and dental services currently provided.

In December, a fundraiser in Dustin’s hometown commemorated his fifth “heavenly birthday,” raising funds to expand the Guatemala City clinic and consider opportunities to serve at other locations in the Central American nation. Thanks to such events, in 2016 alone Dustin’s Dream was able to provide 13 scholarships to local students interested in entering the medical field, plus two scholarships for Baylor students via the Dustin Lee Chamberlain Memorial Endowed Scholarship Fund.

In a journal entry before his death, Dustin wrote that “pain and suffering will come, but it will be for God’s glory.” Every day in Guatemala and around the world, doctors and missions-minded workers carry out Dustin’s legacy and live out the truthfulness of those words.

Sic ’em, Dustin’s Dream!