Alumni Spotlight: Will and Alisa Copeland

Will and Alisa Copeland’s love story didn’t start out so smoothly.

The 2001 alums first started dating when Will asked Alisa to be his girlfriend over milkshakes at the Purple Cow. He had his work cut out trying to convince Alisa that it was a good idea.

“I really had to think about it,” Alisa said. “We had the Washington D.C. trip coming up, and I didn’t want him thinking I’d have to be hanging out with him during the trip.”

After she’d thought about it, Alisa finally relented and said yes.

It was the beginning of a beautiful story, or so it seemed, until they broke up two weeks later. But, as high school relationships often prove, the end was only the beginning. Later that year, Will asked again, and Alisa said yes again. Then they broke up…again. But Will was no stranger to setbacks, having experienced the highs and lows of interscholastic competition as a member of the varsity basketball team. By 10^th grade the two were back together and launching a journey that would span college, medical school, residency and finally Africa.

“One of the values I learned playing basketball was determination,” Will said. “In season, you know that at the end of the day you’re going to be running drills for hours, and you have to learn to just keep going.”

As he nears his 40s with his high school sweetheart and their seven children by his side, Will sees that determination has paid countless dividends for his life. Determination was essential through medical school. It was paramount through residency, and it’s crucial for what some would consider his biggest challenge — his medical mission work in Kenya.

Alisa reflected that she and Will thought they were on the path for what they had expected as kids to be an ideal life. In addition to being high school sweethearts at CAC, the Copelands attended Harding University together in the fall of 2001 and joined brother and sister social clubs. They were married during their junior year of college, and Will was off to medical school at UAMS, where he quickly discovered an interest in neurosurgery.

“I anticipated a career in academic neurosurgery,” Will said.  “It became clear that God had something else in His plans for our life.”

In 2009, the Copelands, along with their son, Liam, and infant daughter, Hayden, moved up to Minnesota for Will’s residency at the famous Mayo Clinic. It was the next step on the pathway of the American dream. Moving to the northern Midwest served a heap of culture shock for the Copelands, who were used to a Southern way of life and the occasional snows of central Arkansas. While in Minnesota, God began to trouble the waters of the Copelands’ expectations for their lives. Shortly after their move, Alisa began attending a Bible study group for doctors’ wives called Side By Side. The group would read books focused on Christian living, and the messages of radical living for Christ began to have a deep impact on her spiritual life. Over time, she reached a crossroads in her faith.

“It got to where I was thinking, ‘Are we really going to live this out?’” Alisa said. “We’re either in it all the way, or we are out.”

The Copelands were primed for a radical change and were soon discussing the idea of medical mission work when Will completed his residency. In 2014, Will took a spring medical mission trip to Tenwek Hospital in Kenya. Will found that the need for a neurosurgeon was great at Tenwek, and he returned excited about the possibility of God using their family in Kenya for His purposes. The entire family visited Tenwek in 2015 to get a feel for the community and understand where God was leading them.

The experience was eye-opening. While in Minnesota they had to get used to new weather, new people and new routines, but they still had most of the comforts of home — comforts which included more than just the food and entertainment they enjoyed. The comforts of home the Copelands quickly found they had taken for granted in the US included state-of-the-art medical equipment and compulsory, state-funded and independent educational options. In fact, the necessity of homeschooling was Alisa’s initial concern about life in Kenya.

“The dealbreaker for me was almost homeschooling,” Alisa said. “We had grown up in a great school environment [at CAC], and I wanted that for my kids.

“But God had primed our hearts in a lot of ways to say, ‘OK, God, there are no dealbreakers.’ We’ll wade into the deep waters of homeschooling.”

And so, with no dealbreakers in the way, the Copelands headed to Kenya in 2016 for a life they never expected but that has made all the difference, in spite, or probably because of, all the challenges they have faced.

For a time, Will was the only neurosurgeon at Tenwek. With the support of the Pan-African Academy of Christian Surgeons, Will began a neurosurgical training program in 2020 with the dream of graduating surgeons who could take their life-saving skills and eternal life-saving message into underserved parts of Africa. Their first student will graduate from the program next December.

“We have four trainees working with us and these are men and women who love the Lord and want to serve Him,” Will said. “The idea is to train up missionary doctors who can go out to Africa and other places in the world that might be harder for us to get to. It really multiplies the work that we’re doing here.”

That work has not always been easy.

When he first arrived in Tenwek, Will faced some unexpected challenges that really brought home the idea that he was not at the Mayo Clinic anymore.

While working on the brain of one of his patients, the light on the microscope he was using during the surgery went out. His careful and fraught work was plunged into darkness.

“I ended up getting the light to come back on and was able to finish the surgery,” Will said. “But it was a wakeup call that things were different.”

Alisa had her own wakeup call while visiting the maternity ward of the hospital. The “rooms” were just beds lined up all in a row with nothing more than a curtain separating each mother from her neighbor.

She struggled with the lack of privacy that would entail giving birth in her new homeland. Fortunately, things worked out well as the Copelands eventually added the two youngest in their family of nine in Kenya. She has also started a Side By Side Bible study group at Tenwek and works to help other doctors’ wives grow in their faith, support their spouses through the unique challenges of medical training and follow God’s call in their lives.

Homeschooling, while always a challenge, has been a success for the Copeland children, but the family is grateful for the time they take stateside to let the children experience their homeland. The goal for the family is to spend four years in Kenya before returning stateside for year-long stretches. So far, the Copelands have been back for year-long stretches twice.

“[God] has given us the gift of being able to come back for pockets of time,” Alisa said. “The kids get to experience CAC, and it’s been such a blessing for us.”

Sophomore Liam, the Copeland’s oldest child, has enjoyed getting to wander the same halls his parents did when they first met. Though he fell in love with rugby in Kenya, Liam has followed Coach Nick Nabors’ call to join the wrestling team. Athletics is another connection point Liam has with his parents.

Both Will and Alisa were involved in athletics while at CAC. Will spent four years as a talented guard for the varsity basketball team, while Alisa spent two years playing basketball for legendary CAC Coach Steve Quattlebaum. Alisa later realized that drama and choir were closer to her heart, but she spent her senior year managing her future husband’s varsity boys’ team.

Both Copelands say that those precious years spent playing for the Mustangs taught them crucial life lessons that have played an important role in making their transition to mission work successful. Will’s determination, strengthened as a Mustang student-athlete, continues to be a life-defining character trait. In Kenya, Will has performed more than 2,000 surgeries — many of them as the only neurosurgeon on staff. The reality of his situation means that there is little time to let up — someone’s life always depends on his determination and skill.

For Alisa, those two years playing for Coach Q taught her an incredibly worthwhile skill: be teachable.

“I didn’t have a lot of skill on the court,” Alisa said. “So, I learned to be teachable, and pick up new skills by being open to new things.”

She directly attributes whatever success she’s had homeschooling her kids to learning the value of being teachable. So much of her unexpected life has involved learning on the fly. Whatever has come, she has been game to try.

“I majored in broadcast journalism in college,” Alisa said. “If I had known what God had planned for our lives. I would have probably majored in something else.”

The Copelands plan to return to their work — to their home — in Kenya this coming summer. Homeschool will start again, as will the work of training up a group of missionary doctors to go into the world and share the good news of Christ.

There will be challenges in their good work — after all, that is what they signed up for. It literally is brain surgery. Things won’t always go so smoothly in a developing nation thousands of miles away from their biological families. But the Copelands are determined to follow the call of God. And, just as God blessed the determined work of Will to persuade Alisa to finally date him, God will continue to bless their work with beauty and abundance.