On his medical missions to Africa, Dr. Lawrence Czer has dealt with poverty, lack of electricity, bad accommodations — and military checkpoints. In Sierra Leone, Czer and his team were sometimes stopped by rifle-toting soldiers who simply wouldn't let them through.

"They'll just have you stand there, and you'll see other people going through," Czer said. The medical team refused to give the soldiers any money. All they could do was try to cajole them.

"Or shame them," the doctor said. "We tell them, 'Listen, we're giving free medical care to your people. Now, what are you doing holding us up from doing that?' "

It worked. For more than a decade, Czer, a genteel, soft-spoken cardiologist, has been a key part of the medical teams organized and sent by his church in California, the Lighthouse Church of Santa Monica, to some of the poorest, most war-ravaged countries in Africa. The trips, which began with a mission to Gambia in 1998, are now made at least twice a year.

Czer, pronounced like "Caesar," is medical director of the heart transplant program at the Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute in Los Angeles. But in Africa, he functions more like a general practitioner, seeing up to 100 people a day with maladies such as broken bones, malaria, parasites, serious burns and high blood pressure.

Czer was raised Catholic. As an adult he joined the Protestant evangelical Lighthouse Church, an outpost of the Foursquare denomination. He and his wife were drawn to the church's search for a "practical Christianity," he said. And that is what motivates him to make his trips to Africa.

"We don't stay in great hotels. We're with the people. We don't exclude anybody. We see the poorest of the poor. We lay hands on people. We touch people. We tell them we love them," he said. "We think that's what, probably, Jesus would do if he were walking the Earth at this point."

In addition to Gambia and Sierra Leone, the church's medical expeditions have traveled to Burundi, Liberia and the Democratic Republic of Congo. The fall mission next month — which Czer probably will not be on — is to travel back to Gambia. The church's bigger spring trip often is to Sierra Leone, where medical team members have set up temporary clinics in several towns. Beyond medical services, the church has provided expertise and raised money to build schools, churches and water projects.

The medical teams make it a point to revisit communities.

"We like to know the people, establish relationships, get to know the country," said Czer, 58.

The church missions focus on places where medical help is most needed. Pediatrician Robert Hamilton, medical coordinator for the visits, called the needs of postwar Sierra Leone, for example, "mind-boggling."

"When you go to Africa, you kind of grow up in some ways: 'Oh, this is what the world is like,' " he said.

Hamilton estimates that each mission costs about $35,000, for medications. The participants, who volunteer their time, generally pay for their own airfare and lodging. The church picks up the cost of medicines and supplies, holding fundraisers to help.

Early in their marriage, Czer and his wife, Kari, who was raised Greek Orthodox, "were seeking a better way to see what God was saying," Czer said. He tried her religion but "just could not understand the liturgy."

Now married 30 years, the couple found in the Lighthouse Church more emphasis on reading the Bible and less on the "ritual and the big buildings" of their previous churches, Czer said.

They joined the church more than 20 years ago.

"I wouldn't be doing this, probably, if it weren't for reading the Bible and trying to understand what God wants us to do," Czer said of his medical forays to Africa.