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About the Authors

Gary Morsch, MD, is the founder and president of Heart to Heart International, a global humanitarian assistance organization dedicated to improving health and alleviating human suffering throughout the world. Since 1992 this grassroots organization has delivered nearly $500 million in pharmaceuticals and medical supplies to people in need in over a hundred countries. Morsch believes that every individual is uniquely gifted and called to serve others. His life-long commitment to volunteerism has taken him literally around the world—from inner-city shelters to rural clinics, from refugee camps to mission hospitals, providing crisis evaluation and organizing programs to meet the needs of the poor.

A family physician, Dr. Morsch serves Heart to Heart as a volunteer but continues to practice medicine with Docs Who Care, Inc., a medical staffing company he founded. Morsch has received numerous awards, including the President’s Volunteer Action Award, the Points of Light Community Leadership Award, the International Relations Council Community Service Award, the Salvation Army’s Others Award, the Washington Times Foundation National Service Award, and the first-ever Humanitarian Award offered by the American Academy of Family Physicians.

Morsch has written several books. His book with co-author Dean Nelson, The Power of Serving Others, shares the amazing story of Heart to Heart and introduces the reader to people whose lives have been transformed by the extraordinary power released when we respond to the needs of our fellow men and women.

Morsch served in the Army during the Vietnam War and currently holds the rank of colonel in the U.S. Army Reserves. He also served in Kosovo and Iraq. Gary Morsch and his wife, Vickie, a school nurse, are the parents of four children and reside on a small farm near Kansas City. As speaker, author, physician, and leader, Morsch believes in the power of service, and has dedicated his life to inspiring and mobilizing others to serve.

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Dean Nelson, Ph.D., has traveled around the world, reporting for magazines and newspapers. He has written about terrorism in Kosovo, slums in Bombay, baseball in Dominican Republic, the Dalai Lama, the America’s Cup yachting race, and smuggling along the U.S./Mexico border; in addition, he has conducted writing workshops throughout the United States, Switzerland, Africa, and India.

Nelson has won several awards for reporting from the Society of Professional Journalists, as well as the top award from the CINE Society for a screenplay on AIDS. This is Nelson’s ninth book. His first, New Father’s Survival Guide, was about staying home during his son’s first year. He has written for The New York Times, the Boston Globe, Science & Spirit magazine, Sojourners, and several other national publications. He holds a master’s degree in journalism from the University of Missouri–Columbia, and a PhD from the E.W. Scripps School of Journalism at Ohio University in Athens, Ohio.

In addition to being in demand at writing workshops, Nelson speaks frequently at spiritual retreats. He is also the founder and director of the nationally acclaimed Writer’s Symposium by the Sea in San Diego, where he has conducted interviews in front of a live audience with writers including Amy Tan, Anne Lamott, Kathleen Norris, Ray Bradbury, George Plimpton, Bill Moyers, Jim Wallis, Rick Reilly, Joseph Wambaugh, Peter Mat-thiessen, Donald Miller, Chitra Divakaruni, Roy Blount Jr., and dozens of others.

This is Nelson and Morsch’s second book together. Their first, Heart and Soul: Awakening Your Passion to Serve, won the San Diego Book Award. Nelson is the founder and director of the journalism program at Point Loma Nazarene University.

Dean Nelson and his wife Marcia, an accountant, live in San Diego and have two children. An avid hockey fan and player, he has not lost any teeth on the ice since elementary school.