It has been over 8 years since I returned from Guyana and mothballed this blog. A lot has changed in 8 years! And yet much remains the same. I am writing now from another “mission field”, from the campus of Haiti Adventist Hospital (HAH) where my husband Tim and I have been living and working for the last 5 months. In future posts I will share more about here, and our current work, but I am often asked how we ended in Haiti and so here is our little narrative:
From Guyana, I returned to Paradise, CA, briefly, then to Loma Linda University (LLU) for a nursing degree. While at LLU, Tim and I reconnected through mutual friends (we’d first met as freshmen at Walla Walla University) and started dating. At the time, Tim was a student in LLU’s Orthotics and Prosthetics (O&P) program and had also served as a student missionary from WWU. While we were dating we discussed a dream of living abroad for a year or two, serving an underserved population together, then making that site a continued part of our private and professional lives and the lives of our hypothetical children. We jokingly called our little dream "Vision 2020"-the name ripped off the posters for LLU’s “Vision 2020" campaign (fundraising for LLU Medical Center building project) that were plastered all over campus at that time. At that time it was a dream and a goal, but lacked much more substance than that. We moved to Albuquerque, NM for Tim's residency with Hanger Clinic and I started work at the Medical ICU at the University of New Mexico Hospital. We got married and, after Tim completed residency and passed O&P boards, I started to work on my MSN, concentrating on nursing education. We both continued working. Through those years of work and study Vision 2020 smoldered; we prayed and perused the websites of aid organizations, dreaming. We had a few loose criteria-we wanted to work in our fields. We wanted to serve people who needed us-we were not interested in making money, duplicating services, or putting local people out of work. We wanted to form an initial relationship with an organization that would be the foundation for an ongoing relationship-so we needed someplace that was stable enough that we would be able to return to it. We wrote lots of emails, but without exception the answers came back "no". No, you don't have enough experience, no, we don't have or particularly want O&P, no, you'd need to commit for a longer stay, no, you will need to be at separate locations and so on. It was a little disheartening, but with the benefit of hindsight, it was a good thing. In March 2018 we reached out to Dr. Hart and the LLU O&P department asking if LLU/Adventist Health International (AHI) might have a place. The response came within hours-yes, we need you in Haiti-maybe Africa, but probably Haiti-and we would really like to have some O&P! In August 2019 we were able to visit Haiti Adventist Hospital (HAH) on a week long survey trip, accompanied by Michael Moore, one of Tim's professors from the LLU school of O&P. In conversations with Michael, Jere Crispins (CEO at HAH) and Dr. Scott Nelson (Medical Director at HAH) we heard another vision-to improve the services that HAH could offer to their patients in Haiti while building an O&P program that will continue to serve the people of Haiti and O&P students. The dreams dovetailed beautifully. Better than we could have planned. We returned to Albuquerque delighted and encouraged and began to stage “Vision 2020” in earnest-fundraising, planning, and purchasing. In August 2020, amid a smallest lull in the chaos of the pandemic, we cleaned out our workspaces, packed our bags, said our goodbyes, and headed to HAH.
Looking back, we see the quiet, but consistent workings of God. At the outset, the vision was fuzzy. As time went on there was still no road of Damascus moments, no glowing pillars in the night sky-but at each step there was a pocket of confirmation or the nudge of a no. Details became sharper, and things just fell into place despite odds to the contrary. It has been a busy 8 years, filled with challenge, change, and transition, but I continue to be encouraged by the peaceful pull of a loving God. We are grateful to be at HAH, grateful to have had the experiences that have prepared, and are preparing us, to serve people in new and exciting ways.
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